


Invasion

by pinkfloyd1770



Category: South Park
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-15
Updated: 2013-08-14
Packaged: 2017-12-23 13:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/926747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkfloyd1770/pseuds/pinkfloyd1770
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stan and Kyle go through the arduous process of expanding their family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When Wendy miscarried, Kyle was in the waiting room of a brightly lit adoption agency in downtown Denver, staring at his phone and listening to Stan pace. An hour after she'd resigned herself to the blow against her fledgling family and marriage, Stan's phone uttered the first few verses of Paint it Black, and Kyle started to bob his head to a different beat. He looked up from his phone to see Stan frantically patting his coat like it had just burst into flames, casting a harried and apologetic look at the receptionist, who hadn't even lowered her magazine.

"Hello?"

Kyle shook his head and refreshed his inbox. The way Stan spoke, it was like he was the one who was usually on call at a clinic.

"Nothing," he muttered as the screen of his phone went white for the span of a blink. 268 open messages left over. All from Stan. All completely and beautifully trivial; the first one stretching back to his second semester of freshman year, the last containing a link to a video of a rampaging hippo. 'Cartman's past life', as Stan had dubbed it.

"God. Wendy, I'm so sorry."

Kyle placed his phone in his lap. Stan's voice regressed three years, to when Kyle had told him tonelessly that he hadn't made it into a residency program this year, that he couldn't see himself dredging up the energy to force his way in later, and so he'd become a GP.

Stan sucked in his lower lip, chewing it while he rested most of his weight against the wall, palm open and head bowed.

"Look, if you need me to come over...OK. Yeah. You're right. What did he say?" Stan's lips thinned and his eyes narrowed. He took a quick breath, but the garbled voice on the other end stilled him. He just nodded. Then again. "All right. I guess I shouldn't be surprised by that. Just...call me later. Yeah? I will. Take care of yourself, Wendy. Thanks. You too. Bye."

Stan pocketed his phone in a smooth, slow motion. He righted himself like an animatronic sculpture. His eyes were clear. Blue. Dark.

"Wendy lost the baby." He finally said, and his voice was whole. Kyle at least thanked some force beyond his power for that.

"Miscarriage." Kyle tested his clinical tone, uselessly, pedantically, and wondered if it had been a complete or incomplete abortion. His eyes fell from Stan's gaze, to the corded carpet.

He supposed he should be flattered that Stan's concern three years ago possibly transcended that instilled by the spontaneous loss of his former lover's fetus. Or at least he could put the two on equal footing.

Suddenly Kyle became aware that he hadn't spoken, except for one token technical term that was so plain and obvious as to be ugly.

He gestured for Stan to come next to him; he held out his hand and Stan slid his palm across the top without tightening his grip. Stan looked past Kyle towards the door.

"It's really shitty, you know? Wendy, I mean. They've been trying for so long." He just shook his head.

Kyle frowned. "It's been what? A year and a half leading up to this? They've got time." Kyle didn't mention that the average time for couples to conceive was six months, that they should have been seeing a fertility specialist, if they were to follow the slow contour of modern medical thought. Except Wendy would know. She would have consulted, poured through journals, made appointments. She just hadn't felt the need to admit her knowledge to Stan.

"Dude, do you think we should reschedule this appointment?"

Kyle didn't conceal his surprise. "Why?"

Stan seemed less certain. "I don't know. It just seems...weird, going ahead with this right now, while Wendy's just gotten that news."

"Stan, this is our first one on one meeting. We're not just gonna fill our names out on a form and get the kid gift wrapped. Don't you remember how long this whole thing is supposed to take?"

Eighteen months. He answered his own question. It would have been easier for Kyle to jizz in a cup and give it to Stan's sister, if he hadn't been terrified of the resulting offspring and the thought of any part of himself near Shelly's vagina.

"Yeah," Stan spoke breathily, as though he were in the few frigid moments before a brisk winter run.

_Just dive in Stan, hm? That's what you always do._ Kyle couldn't help but fill his mind's voice with a tone of reverence.

Stan turned to Kyle and smiled. "But we'll get through it, yeah? No big deal."

"No big deal," Kyle mimed, neatly. Just like they'd gotten through Kyle's slide into apparent mediocrity, just like they're getting through Stan's current unemployment. But they were the right age for kids, Stan said. Career and motivational aptitude be damned.

Stan had entwined his fingers in the capacious mass of curls at he base of Kyle's skull. Kyle's shoulders momentarily pinched as Stan started to lazily rove over the oblique curve of his scalp with the pads of his fingers.

"It'll be OK," Stan muttered. Kyle didn't know which of them he was addressing.

Stan's palliative motions pulled Kyle into a content oblivion, so when the receptionist called their names, and Stan relinquished his masseuse's grip on his scalp, Kyle had to equilibrate himself, his balance, his body heat, like he'd stumbled out of bed right after sex.

"Hooray," he muttered artlessly as he forced himself up and ambled after Stan. Stan took long, quick strides; he wore dark jeans, a button down shirt, and a grey blazer, which to Kyle's disappointment hid anything he might have been interested in looking at.

The receptionist stopped in front of a closed door. It was sturdy and smooth and latticed with green, frosted glass. She knocked twice and turned the handle at the behest of a muffled response.

Kyle still trailed behind Stan; his line of sight was caught up by the edge of the door frame. He paused for a few seconds, stared, sighed and then walked in to give Stan his support.

The office took advantage of a large window, making it as bright and inviting as the waiting room. The desk and shelves and chairs all looked to be made of pine, a soft wood, according to Stan. Kyle glanced at the surface of the desk and saw shallow scratches and the dents. On the wall were diplomas and certificates, all neatly framed for posterity. Kyle had no idea what kind of qualifications were necessary to be a baby pusher. He sat down in one of the two chairs without preamble, edging his chair closer to Stan's as introductions started rolling off.

"Good morning, Mr. Marsh?" Stan, still standing, took shook the woman's hand.

"Mr. Broflovski?" A pause and Kyle realized he was expected to stand. He smiled as he did so, extending his hand and meeting the woman's eyes. In her early thirties. Thin, long, dark hair. Not black like Stan's. Kyle smiled wider at the observation.

"I'm Sherri Hickman. It's nice to meet you both."

"Thanks," Stan smiled again, nervous, his fingers stretching and curling against his thighs.

"You can call us Stan and Kyle. He's Stan, I'm Kyle." Kyle indicated each of them with a curt hand motion.

She nodded. "Of course." Another smile. "And you can call me Sherri." She looked down at her papers. "So, it says here that the two of you have been involved in a domestic partnership for...eight years..."

_Oh God._ Kyle resisted the urge to roll his eyes. They'd been warned that the whole process would be more complicated, more expensive. More tiring.

Stan cleared his throat. "We've known each other our whole lives. I mean we've been dating since before we graduated high school, so technically, we've been together for almost fourteen years." He finished by placing his hands on his knees, and started tapping his foot lightly against the floor.

Kyle placed his hand on Stan's shoulder. He should have taken the jacket off. Stan's shoulders were firm and finely contoured .

"Congratulations." And she sounded sincere, suited for the job of delivering both elation and disappointment.

"I'm just asking for technical reasons. As we go through the process, we'll have to use as much official information as we can."

"Right." Stan didn't sound at all certain about this assertion, and he spoke slowly.

Sherri returned to her papers, and Kyle turned his head to catch Stan's eye; he mouthed 'relax' and smiled, squeezing his shoulder.

A flip of a paper and Sherri met their faces again.

"Now, Mr. Broflovski, you're currently working at the Sloane Clinic in Fort Collins Colorado, correct?"

"Yes."

"Good, good. And it looks like that's been steady for the last three years...your income..."

Stan interrupted. "Look, it's all there on the sheet. Why do we have to go through all this now?" Stan leaned back and placed one palm on the back of the left arm; his other hand went to work massaging his temple.

Kyle didn't bother to give placating looks or apologies; he wanted to stand up and say 'Thanks, but no thanks, this isn't going to work today.' But he'd cut this block of time neatly out of his schedule, even going as far as to clear tomorrow so he and Stan could walk aimlessly around the park, filling the time with hopeful smiles and narrated daydreams. He smiled at the quaintness of the concept. Only for Stan.

"I'm sorry, Stan. But from my experience it's easier to go through these forms step by step and iron out any possible inconsistencies or misunderstandings." She didn't even have to sound diplomatic.

Kyle sighed and brought himself back.

"All the information's correct. The reference I gave is up to date, and ready to be called."

"Excellent." She cleared her throat. "And Stan...you've been unemployed since April of last year, correct?"

Stan just nodded tightly. His large hands looked awkward, the way he was moving them in the confined space in front of his stomach and before his knees.

"Stan does a lot of freelance work. He's been writing op-eds and book reviews for the Coloradoan. He helped build a new section onto the animal shelter. He did most of the carpentry work, and it was all volunteer work. And our house." He paused, maybe for effect, maybe to give Stan a chance to voice embarrassment or contrition. None came. "When we bought our house, it was a piece of crap. Stan replaced the downstairs floors, a lot of the sheet rock in the garage...he practically rebuilt the whole thing."

Stan nearly guffawed; he bit his lip in time. Partial truth, they could both concede. The floor, yes. Stan had rented some large machine that Kyle couldn't remember the name of, a pneumatic something, then bought five bundles of oak floor planks. They'd spent three weekends, peeling off the old floor plank by plank, laying the new boards at a foot an hour. Kyle would crouch, set the tongue into the groove, and spring back up as Stan adjusted the machine's position and sent his sledge arching bluntly onto the piston, effectively stealing Thor's thunder. Five hours later on the first day, and Kyle had discovered he'd just participated in an excruciating squat routine set to the din of Stan's sledge hammer.

After seeing his geriatric gait and hearing the reason behind it, Kenny had grinned widely and said, 'Mhm, Kyle on his knees in every room of the house while Stan pounds away. All is right in the world.'

Sherri was typing, nodding. The room filled with what sounded like a hundred sets of chattering teeth.

"That's actually very good to hear. Involved in the community and at home." She paused. "Have you considered whether you want a boy or a girl?"

_Boy,_ Kyle thought, distantly, half-heartedly. Black hair and grey eyes. Someone whom Stan could teach about woodworking and nature. Dogs. Kyle's Adam's apple bobbed with suppressed laughter. Then Stan would show him all his favorite books and stories and eventually tell him that he should drink gin, not vodka, because gin was what you drank when you wanted to relax on a hot summer day and have a 'serious' discussion.

Stan shook his head, smiling. "We don't have a preference."

Kyle nodded his consent mechanically. They wouldn't have been able to voice their concrete decisions anyway.

"All right, now, we can just get through all the rest of these papers."

She moved down the sheet, line by line, inch by inch, reassuringly, professionally, like she was going through a well practiced procedure for removing a deeply embedded sliver of metal.

Stan kept his composure once questions about their employment and the length and integrity of their relationship had been put to rest. He even smiled again, when it was suggested that he had a fatherly quality about him. If Stan hadn't been sitting next to him, Kyle would have let his face screw up at the utter vacuousness of the sentiment; as it stood, he caught himself up on the coat-tails of Stan's jovial enthusiasm.

Kyle knew the meeting had passed its prime when Sherri started asking them about their life in South Park during high school. She'd switched the line of conversation right after the light had glinted off the face of her watch, catching Kyle's eye like a beacon in the dark; he'd have the iridescent spot dancing in his vision for at least half an hour.

_All the time has to be filled to the brim, right?_ Kyle's lip curled as he let Stan roll off a generic answer about socially constrained, blue collar towns. Sherri just nodded in amicable incomprehension. It was like watching an over rehearsed commercial. Kyle cleared his throat and stood the moment there was a lull in the conversation.

"It was great meeting you, Sherri. Stan and I have a lot to think about, and I'm sure you'll be really helpful over the next few months." Kyle glanced at Stan, who seemed to be operating in a different reference frame.

"Are we done already?" He sounded almost confused. Kyle placed his hand under Stan's elbow and pulled up, even though he wasn't actually strong enough to move Stan's bulk in any meaningful way.

Sherri segued smoothly.

"Exactly on time, actually. Now, I've marked this calendar." She handed it to Stan.

"We'll meet again two weeks from today. Then two weeks after that, and monthly, from then on, and I'll direct and refer you as the process goes on." She paused, favoring Stan with a friendly expression. "I realize what we've covered here may seem trivial and redundant, but that's the process."

"Right." Stan finally stood, straightening his jacket. He cleared his throat. "So, next, uh, we were told that we'd have to start a home study." Stan truncated his thought process, looked to Kyle, then to Sherri.

"That's all outlined in the information packet. This is a pre home study, if you like. In two weeks, you'll really be starting on the road to parenthood."

Kyle smiled. "Wonderful."

### 

Home study consisted of exactly everything Kyle disliked about an evaluation process. Phone calls, always minutes after he got home from work, asking him to confirm an appointment or the filing of a form whose name he couldn't remember. The agency had Stan's number too, but they always called Kyle. Sometimes, if Kyle had just gotten home from a day of consecutive pediatric flu cases, complete with panicked parents who didn't seem to understand that he couldn't give their children antibiotics to treat a virus, he'd see the number, hand the phone over to Stan, walk to the bedroom and fall spread eagle onto their bed, and sleep until Stan roused him for dinner.

On the occasions when Kyle thought himself levelheaded enough to speak to someone cheerful and enthusiastic, he answered curtly and without preamble: Yes, Fine, No, Maybe, I don't know, encompassed most of his new vocabulary, with a prolonged 'hrmmm' rounding off the end of any non-sequiturs and lapses in conversation. By the end of the month, Stan was Stan, and Kyle was Mr. Broflovski.

During their fourth meeting, since Kyle decided he might as well try and keep some objective score of their progress through the process, the topic of the home visit had been broached, and Stan immediately took it upon himself to start gathering what he called 'high quality, figured hardwood' so he could start making a crib. Kyle had stared at him for a few seconds before moving to the bedroom, retrieving the information packet they'd received. He circled with thick, black pen the section that described the time table between the end of homestudy, and the beginning of interviewing perspective birth mothers. All in all, he'd circumscribed a hypothetical time span of at least ten months, first pressing his pen right under the words 'immediately following' and closing the opposite arc of the curve just below 'final sign over.' Kyle had read the last few lines. Apparently, they didn't assume full ownership of the child until they and the mother had dotted all their i's, crossed all their t's and initialed here, there and everywhere. It reminded him of adopting a puppy from the animal shelter.

And speaking of which, Sparky II (Stan's brilliant idea), came trotting into the kitchen, sat down, and assumed the same expression of diligent, almost affected concentration as his owner.

Stan shrugged and tossed the papers onto the counter.

"It's still a good idea to start now. I mean, I'll have to cut the planks, shape them, sand them, stain them, make sure the finished product is stable. All that fun stuff." He smiled at the end, carefree.

"We've got time, Stan. You've got time. I mean, all day, mostly." Kyle regretted the words the moment he spoke them, but Stan didn't seem distraught.

"Yeah, I should get up off my lazy ass and start making some money, true." He knelt and started making cloying noises at the dog, practically rubbing their faces together. Kenny always asked when Stan and Sparky would elope to a country where dog fucking was legal.

"No, Stan, that's not what I meant."

"Kyle, relax. I'm not gonna go to pieces because you say something that's true. I'm just...excited, you know?"

Kyle nodded. "Yeah."

"Hey, I'm gonna go for a walk with Spark. Wanna come?" He was already walking to the closet for his coat.

"No. I'm kind of tired. I think I'll just heat some leftovers and...I don't know...pass out on the couch watching TV."

Stan laughed. "Oh right, that sounds exactly like Kyle Broflovski." He kissed Kyle sloppily on the temple.

"You sure you don't want me to make you something? It'd take like twenty minutes, and all you'd have to do is stick it in the oven."

_Stick it in._ Kyle almost smirked stupidly, and had no idea why. Too much time around Kenny? Or too much time around sniveling children during flu season.

"No, no. Go ahead."

Stan's expression slid near neutrality. "OK dude. I'll see you in about an hour then."

He's out the door, Sparky II unleashed and trailing him like his shadow.

Kyle just stared at the circled time table. It might as well have been a photograph of a crop circle, complete with the frantic caption 'Evidence of extraterrestrial life incontrovertible.'

_Alien life. That'd be better._

Kyle gathered the papers and stacked them. For the first time since the air conditioner had broken in the dead of summer, Kyle was glad for his forthcoming double shift.

### 

Said double shift flowed like a river of brick. Kyle had apparently treated every screaming, runny nosed child within a thirty mile radius. Or at least those whose parents didn't have a pediatrician on speed dial. Because Kyle was superfluous in the face of a carefully structured, corporate and state subsidized health care program. All that would keep him afloat would be a constant stream of awkward, stupid teenagers who were too embarrassed to go through their parent's insurance provider and see a specialist.

These reassuring thoughts occupied Kyle while he made his fourth trip from his office to the drinking fountain. Six months ago, a bill had passed through the legislature, freeing up several hundred thousand dollars worth of funds for renovation to the clinic. Over the course of ten weeks, the workers had ripped up the old, grimy carpet, peeling it off in strips like they were skinning a dead giant. Then they'd replaced the yellowing, cracking ceiling tiles with smooth, white panels that looked like squares of fresh chalk in the soft hall lights. Finally, and to Kyle's relief, the order had come down to replace all the examination tables and sinks, and most of the equipment in the bacteriology and virology lab. Now he could tell hysterical teenage couples that one of them was pregnant and the other had gonorrhea in the same afternoon.

Upon his return, Kyle found the receptionist waiting in his office. He thought briefly that she'd gotten so bored she's going to proposition him. Or that could be a reflex thought on his part.

"You've got a patient." She stood when he entered

"Oh? Another kid needs penicillin for a cold?" Kyle didn't even bother to pick up his prescription pad.

"Ha. No. A 29 year old man, with a one year old. He's afraid the baby has a..."

"Respiratory infection," Kyle finished. "Coughing. Runny nose. Low fever. Got it." He turned to leave.

"You're not even going to ask if that's the case?"

"What else could it be? We've got a flu spike, everyone's panicking about it. And if it was something worse, this guy wouldn't have taken his baby to a walk in clinic."

The examination room was a few doors down from his office, and Kyle didn't have any time to form an anticipatory image of who could be waiting for him; he only took a breath and flung open the door.

"Clyde?" He said the name with the deadpan bluntness of sucker punch to the face.

And indeed Clyde Donovan was sitting before him, cradling a baby in his large, hairy arms. He had a black windbreaker tied around his waist, and wore a red tee shirt that looked like it had been stained multiple times with something purple. His hair was like a shaggy mop sitting carelessly on his head.

"Kyle, thank God. I thought I'd made a mistake, when I tried to remember where you worked." If he hadn't had a baby in his arms, Clyde probably would have jumped up and hugged Kyle.

Kyle closed the door and stepped forward. The baby was coughing in short, dusty bursts. Everything about it made Kyle think of some desiccated, stunted miscalculation.

"That's great, Clyde. Why did you need to come see me specifically?" _And how the hell did Craig and Clyde spawn?_ Then he shook his head and waited for Clyde to respond.

Clyde swallowed. "I...well I was supposed to be watching Robb. That's the baby's name. Well, it's Robert, but we call him Robb..."

"Clyde." Kyle resisted the urge to grab him by the shoulders. "What's wrong with the baby?"

"Robb."

"Robb," Kyle amends. "What's wrong with him?"

"He was fine in the morning," Clyde started rocking his arms. "Then around noon he started coughing, and I thought if I just gave him some water things would be fine. But then his nose started running, and he got a fever, and I didn't have my insurance card with me, and..." He gazed up at Kyle, as though he could convey all the feeling and details of the morning and afternoon by looking helpless.

"OK." Kyle washed his hands, dried them and pulled on the pale violet gloves that made his hands feel like they were stuck under the skin of a dead animal.

Kyle held out his arms, and to his surprise, Clyde relinquished the baby without need for encouragement. It was warm. A warm, helpless mass of flesh. He had red hair.

Kyle sat with the baby, next to the table where he always kept his diagnostic equipment neatly arranged on a rack.

"He's quiet," Kyle commented, as he reached for the stethoscope.

Clyde nodded. "Yeah. He cried a lot on the way over here."

Kyle just 'hmmed' in response. He listened to the heartbeat first. Fine. Small but steady. Then he placed the scope on the baby's back. His coughing segued into soft sobbing. Kyle shook his head curtly when Clyde moved to stand. He kept listening until the sobbing quieted, and the coughs resumed. After a few seconds he takes the stethoscope plugs from his hears and places the instrument around his neck.

"You said he had a runny nose?"

"Yeah." Clyde's voice sounded hoarse.

"What color was the mucus?"

"Yellow," Clyde said immediately. "His nose ran on my coat."

Robb was looking at him. Wide blue eyes. Blue and red. The sight disconcerted Kyle.

"All right." Kyle reached for the thermometer, snapped a fresh guard on the reader, and placed it in Robb's ear.

"100 degrees," Kyle announced. He removed the guard and readjusted Robb on his knee. He was coughing again.

"You can hold him now." Clyde was in front of him in two large, quick strides, smiling. _The stains are probably jelly,_ Kyle thought.

"So, what do you think it is? Flu or cold?"

"Cold." Kyle looks at his hands, a thin veneer of sweat forming under the latex. He appraised Clyde, even though he's totally engrossed in Robb.

"You're going to want to make sure to avoid anything exerting. No running or playing outside. Plenty of fluids. You know, all the stuff they told us when we were in school." Kyle sighs as he finishes the sentence. _Never doubt your dignity, Kyle._

"And, make sure you keep an eye on the fever. Anything above 101, you come back and see me, or go to the hospital."

"So, he's all right then?" Clyde sounded so hopeful Kyle would have been tempted to lie under different circumstances.

"Yeah. Nothing to worry about." Kyle narrowed his eyes. Red hair. Why would they bother...

"When did you and Craig adopt?" It's personal, something Kyle would never ask any other patient, but with Clyde, it's an almost comfortable conversation starter.

Clyde averted his eyes, holds Robb closer. "He's not mine. Ours. Not ours. He's Craig's sister's."

"Oh." Kyle glanced back at the door, where Robb's medical chart was sitting in the clear plastic holder. He retrieved the clipboard and examined the paper work.

Robert John O'Connor. Born July 16th.

"Los Almos," Kyle muttered.

13 months old. Parents, Jessica and Justin O'Connor. No allergies. No surgical procedures. Blood type O.

Kyle lowered the clipboard.

"I'm sorry, Clyde."

"For what?"

Kyle didn't say anything for a few seconds. He took a deep breath, confirming the sharpness of sterility in the room.

"Is Craig out of town right now?" Kyle tired to placate himself with the thought that Craig would be more responsible than that.

"He's at work. Jess and her husband wanted some time off, so they left Robb with us for a week." Clyde looked worried again. "Do you think I should have brought Craig in?"

"Why? Just tell him what I told you. If he wants, he can call me." _Not that he will, but it's the thought that counts._

"I didn't wanna fuck this up, you know?" Clyde's tone changed; it's clearer and sharper now, earnest. "I mean, I really want a kid of my own someday." He smiled down at Robb, the gesture stilling Kyle's attempt to truncate the conversation. He really looked like the ideal of paternity, gentle and assured and loving.

And Stan would be like that. Wendy as a mother would be like that. Clyde and Stan and Wendy. Stan's child would have black hair and grey eyes.

"Craig says he hates kids." Clyde's voice was quiet. "He'll watch Robb, because of his sister, but he usually just leaves him with me, and if he wakes up at night crying, I always go and make sure he gets back to sleep."

"You mean Craig won't do anything about it?" He should have just said that the discussion was a violation of his code of conduct. Clyde wouldn't question him. Stan would have told any doctor who told him that that he was full of shit.

"He will. But he doesn't like it. I can tell." Clyde leaned back, moving Robb with him. "Sometimes Craig is a real ass."

Clyde said the word as though it were meant to be a weapon. Blunt and fashioned to cause harm. Only he waved it around for show, ineffectually, when he should have turned it on the source of his protracted consternation.

"Then tell him." Kyle surprised himself with vehement he sounds. The feeling lagged behind his growing sense of indignation.

Clyde sighed. "No, I'm not going to bring it up. It'd just be one huge headache for both of us."

"Look, Clyde. Don't take this from me as your doctor. Take it as...your friend. You've wanted kids for a while now, I'll bet."

When Clyde nodded, Kyle continued.

"Then you have to talk to Craig about that. It can't just be him getting what he wants because he might throw a tantrum."

Clyde laughed. "Craig doesn't do tantrums. He's more into glowering and sitting on the balcony drinking whiskey."

"Adult tantrums, then. You really need to talk to him, or this is going to come back to bite both of you in the ass one day." Kyle felt proud for not uttering the words 'you'll wake up one day and realize...'

Clyde just shook his head slowly, almost patronizingly. "Kyle, thanks for the support, or advice, I guess. But, now really isn't the right time. Craig and I are in a pretty good place, not perfect, but it's nice. We'll both be ready sometime, and we'll go from there."

The statement was so plain and innocuous that Kyle didn't immediately know how to respond.

"Do you and Stan want a kid?" Clyde leaned away from the wall, but he still slouched slightly.

Kyle glanced back to the chart. "Maybe. We're...considering some agencies right now. We'll see how it goes."

Clyde smiled. "That's nice."

"Yeah." Kyle put the clipboard on the counter. "I think that should more or less cover everything. Just make sure he gets plenty of rest. Fluids. Check his temperature regularly, and give me a call if anything comes up." He could just picture that, getting a call from a frantic Clyde at 3 in the morning. Stan's transcendent sympathy would probably make him want to come to the clinic, if it came to it.

"Thanks Kyle." Clyde stood. With the baby in his arms, his bulk was accentuated. He was in reasonably good shape, his chest and shoulders broad, his gut a mild, inoffensive protrusion. 'Craig likes bears,' Kenny had once snickered, drunkenly, causing Bebe to smack the back of his head.

"It's no problem." He opened the door for Clyde.

"Hey, we should all get together some time. You and Stan, and Craig and me."

Kyle nodded tolerantly. "Sure. I'll ask Stan. He'd like that." And he would. Clyde was just as excessively affectionate towards Sparky II as Stan, and the surest way to Stan's good side was through his dog. And Kyle could take the edge off of Craig's personality by offering him gin and discussing his news column, which he admitted was worthy of its laudatory designation of 'sharply written, and full of wry observations about the state of American cultural life.' He never failed to ask Craig, in all seriousness, how the state of American cultural life was fairing on that specific day.

"Cool. And good luck with the adoption." Sympathy. Kyle felt his chest tighten.

"Thanks." He stepped into the hall and watched as Clyde left, as though he'd told Clyde bad news and his presence would somehow offer comfort through osmosis of empathy.

When Clyde had gone, Kyle peeled off his gloves, tossed them into the garbage, and sat down. He stared at Clyde's vacated seat.

"Well, that was horrifying."


	2. Chapter 2

##  Chapter 2

On Saturdays Kyle always woke up after Stan. He looked like a corpse, lying face down, one arm dangling over the edge of the bed, so his fingertips barley brushed the floor, his legs spread out in an inverted V. The smell of bacon grease and frying eggs usually dredged him up around half past eleven. If that didn't coax him from the sheets, Kyle could count on Stan walking in, shirtless and smiling, brushing a hand against his cheek and telling him in a serious tone that he'd almost scalded his chest making them breakfast. And Kyle, still in danger of asphyxiation by the pillow, would call him a liar. Because Stan refused to cook bacon in a skillet; too fattening and greasy. He microwaved each slice to desiccation, so they nearly crumbled in his fingers.

Today, there was no smell or sound of cooking from the kitchen, not when Stan walked in and shook Kyle.

"Hey. Kyle." He spoke softly.

"Why are you whispering?"

Stan paused. "I thought I'd try to be considerate."

Kyle thought he dozed off for a few minutes at that. Stan's hand was still on his shoulder, so he must have been wrong.

"What time is it?"

"10:30."

"Stan. You wanna be considerate? Get out and come back in an hour."

Stan's hand and warmth left him. He walked to the opposite side of the bed. His form must have blocked some of the light coming in through the windows. Maybe he cast an elongated shadow. Stick figure Stan. Kyle gave him eye holes and a mouth. The eye holes had their top edges clipped off. Worried looking eye holes.

"Appointment's at one," Stan muttered.

"And it's 10:30."

"Yeah, but..." Dull footfalls and Stan's next to Kyle's side of the bed.

"Dude, you cleaned the whole house yesterday, you washed the floors, the windows. You weeded our nonexistent garden."

"Trimmed the hedge."

"Two bushes flanking the entrance."

"Maybe I should have lowered the blade on the lawnmower."

"Any lower and you would have been churning the soil."

Click. Click.

Kyle's face scrunched up and he raised it from the pillow.

Stan's thumbnail slipped between his top and bottom teeth, the short, frayed nub probably dangerously close to its bed.

Kyle smiled. "You look nice this morning." Stan had on a soft grey sweater Kyle got him for Christmas. Pure cashmere, spun in Italy, nearly budget breaking, even at half price.

_Grey and black._ Kyle nearly grimaced.

Stan stills his mouth and returns the gesture; his lips are stretched tight by the nervous energy humming in his body.

"Really?"

"Oh yeah. You'll be the prettiest girl at the dance, no question."

Stan's lips relax, a wound closing by magic.

"Kyle, come on. We're supposed to show how...put together we are."

"OK." Kyle turned away, towards the window. It was a sunny day. Clouds peeled away. Naked blue sky. Dust flickering in the light. His head felt heavy, as though he'd been knocked down and was picking himself up from amongst broken remains.

_Click. Click._

"Stan, come here." Kyle held out his hand.

Stan frowned but joined their hands.

"On the bed. Meet me half way."

Stan knelt on the mattress, his thighs mimicking the same V of Kyle's legs minutes ago. The light splayed against Stan's face; he would have been a perfect subject, even for a novice photographer.

Kyle ignored the urge to touch a sun splashed cheek. He unbuckled Stan's belt and hooked his fingers in the loops on his jeans, his thumbs digging beneath the hem of his boxers.

"Kyle..."

Kyle doesn't say anything; he exposes Stan in one smooth motion. Stan is soft as Kyle takes him in his mouth. He's half hard when Kyle runs his tongue along his head. He swells to full size when Kyle envelopes him to his base, then rapidly withdrawals, just a wet pop and Stan's long, shuddering breath as residue.

Kyle works slowly, edging Stan towards climax in tincture motions, using the tip of his tongue, moving forward and back in careful drags. He keeps Stan on the cusp as long as possible, his gauge of reference Stan's low, labored breaths, Stan's fingers pulling his hair, pressing into his scalp. He grips Stan's hips, takes in fully and releases him once, twice, and then Stan is spent, and Kyle is wiping his mouth. Stan's taste and scent. Simple. Unabashed.

"Better?" Kyle looks up and sees red cheeks and lidded eyes.

"You didn't have to." But he's smiling, grinning. He leaned in and kissed Kyle, his hands first on his shoulders, then on his chest, his back, his stomach.

Kyle pushed him, lightly.

"One hour."

Stan stared at him, all trace of post coital euphoria drained from his face.

"Wait, Kyle, you just..."

"And now I want my one hour." He speaks matter of factly. _No, I'm sorry. We won't have the test results for another two hours. Should have played it safe._

Kyle takes Stan's hand, runs his thumb across his knuckles. July through January. Simple again.

"You don't even want me to return the favor?"

"Nope. Just one hour. Wake me at 11:55." He's not aroused, not even tired anymore, but that doesn't matter. Stan would be fine now, and then they'd have their home session.

Stan gives him a last kiss and leaves, closing the door behind him.

Kyle turned on his side and stared out the window. He can see the mountains rising against the sky, capped with white. Horsetooth. Stan's favorite weekend retreat. If only they'd let Sparky II run around freely, Stan would probably take up residence. And Kyle would get more exercise than just a trail a week. If they adopted a child, those trips would become a thing of the past, for years at least. They'd only be able to take a toddler to the welcome center, take in the large photographs pinned behind glass, the samples of rock formations and trees that Stan never got tired of reading about. But he loved touching the rock face before he climbed it to get a better view of the lake, smelling the fresh aroma of pine trees, crushing the needles in his hands and then moving those hands through Kyle's hair and along his face, across his lips.

He swallowed. He could still taste Stan, vaguely, like something blurred behind frosted glass. Dull tastes. Stan liked the taste of pine against his lips.

The sound of sizzling and popping made Kyle sit up. After a moment he could make out smells. Eggs and peppers and cheese. He looked at the nightstand. Twenty five minutes left. Stan would have timed things down with a stopwatch. The smell made Kyle's mouth water and stomach loosen.

"Bastard. Trying to drive me out with food." He spoke without any conviction.

Kyle stepped into the bathroom after the smells and sounds of the kitchen started to gnaw at the pit of his stomach. He had extra time, and stood motionless in the hot stream of water for so long he was sure he'd used up a bath tub's worth of water by the time he'd finished washing.

Kyle entered the kitchen with his hair hanging in damp ringlets around his eyes and forehead.

"Hey. You're early." Stan's smile would have been shy, if Kyle hadn't seen it so many times before, when Stan wanted an early start on some project involving table saws and electric sanders, or when he wanted to get to the park just as the sun rose.

"You didn't have to," Kyle says, even as he cuts into the omelet. Peppers and cheddar and mushroom, wrapped in a delicate shell that Kyle told himself he could never reproduce.

"I wanted to. What else were you going to eat? Cereal?"

Kyle doesn't mention that he always eats cereal on weekdays. He finishes the omelet and places the dish in the washing machine. His cup is still half full with dark tea, still steaming as he takes a large gulp. Tea is one of the few things Kyle is particular enough about to buy at a specialty store. It's run by people dressed in green aprons and white shirts, smiling, enthusiastic people whom Cartman would have a field day mocking. Hippies, tree huggers, Democratic pussies. Kyle agrees with him, at least on the first two counts. But they know their tea.

"Sherri sounded pretty optimistic on the phone yesterday." Stan speaks softly and assuredly.

Kyle doesn't say anything until the cup is on the table.

"Of course she does. That's half her job." The cup is back to his lips before Stan can speak. From across the body of the cup, like a soldier staring out along the barrel of his gun, Kyle can see Stan's face absorb the impact of his words, his brow drawing down, his lips thinning.

"The house looks great, we're ready, we've had weeks of prep, and we'll do fine." It's rattled off like a list of symptoms and their possible treatments, with his best professional tone.

Stan sighs. "Yeah, I know. But it's just like back in school, when I took finals. I studied, went to class, took notes, but that didn't mean I wasn't freaking out on exam day."

Kyle nodded. His cup is empty. "How's Wendy?"

"She's better. A lot better." Stan tensed again, and Kyle prepared to switch the topic to Clyde and Craig visiting.

"Look, Kyle...the miscarriage took a lot out of Wendy."

"Right. I understand."

Stan shifted, bringing his thumb nail up, lowering it quickly.

"I was thinking, not now. But, if in the future." He paused. "If in the future she still has trouble, and if she wants to, and if you say it's okay."

"Stan, what..."

"I could, you now, donate my...material."

"Sperm donation? You wanna give Wendy your sperm, so she can have a kid?" _Black hair._ Kyle almost laughed. It would be perfect. Stan could even see the kid every week. He'd be an uncle. Uncle Stan.

Stan lept to a defense. "It was a fly of the moment thought. We both know that. It probably won't come to it." He winced. "But, I'm someone she's known, for a long time, and..."

"Stan, she had a miscarriage. That has nothing to do with sperm. She lost the fetus in the tenth week, it was probably environmental, even hormonal." _And straight teeth, and full lips. And..._

"But it's not just the miscarriage. She told me, Kyle. I know that it should take a few months of active...trying, but it's been over a year and a half. And...that's why I said what I said. I'm not going to jizz in a cup and drive over to her place."

_That might save us all some grief._

"I understand. Wendy's your friend. Our friend. It's fine. And if worst comes to worst." He didn't finish his thought. His hand was trembling. He put it under the table.

"Kyle, just forget I mentioned it."

"All right. I understand, though. I do." His hand was wrapped around his knee cap. Fingers digging into the tendon.

Silence.

"Twenty minutes." Stan announced, his trepidation and excitement blending seamlessly. Cold ink in warm water.

Kyle rested his cheek on his fist. "Want me to give you a hand job?"

Stan tried to laugh. "That'd be a little underwhelming right now, wouldn't it?"

Kyle shrugged. "Maybe. Wanna find out?"

"We have less than twenty minutes, dude."

"More than enough time."

"Are you seriously thinking about this right now?" Almost a reprimand.

"It's a joke, Stan. She won't kick in the door if we don't answer it on the first knock." _Freeze, baby pusher squad! You're attempting to engage in adult activities in the vicinity of an agent! Release your partner's dick._

His laughter morphed Stan's incredulity to concern.

"It's fine, Stan. Just thinking of a real joke." He stood and walked to the bedroom. The bed was still unmade, and Kyle thought of leaving it like that, but Stan would never leave the bed, like a dead animal with its innards strewn across the floor. Kyle remedied the carnage then went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth and returned to the kitchen. By the time the clock had cleared the remaining ten minutes, Kyle considered trying to manhandle Stan out of his pants and give him a second climax, if only to stop the tedium.

The doorbell rang and Stan nearly flipped the chair and sent the table skidding as he bounded to the front of the house.

"Hey, wait up. Togetherness, remember?" Kyle called, loudly enough to be heard past the entrance.

Stan didn't say anything until Sherri was standing beneath the frame, dressed in a freshly pressed suit. She could have passed for an auditor. Kyle would have been happier to air any financial indiscretions to the government.

"Stan." She shook his hand. Her nails were smooth and glossed in the sunlight. She looked over Stan's shoulder.

"Kyle."

_Oh. No Mr. Broflovski?_

"Hi, Sherri. It's good to see you." He addressed her as one of his patients. In and out.

"And you, Kyle. You and Stan have a beautiful home. I can see what you were talking about, when you said Stan was a wonderful craftsman." She looked at the ceiling and walls. Kyle couldn't recall much woodworking having gone into either.

"We can start with the kitchen." Stan interceded. Beautiful, high strung Stan.

"Lead the way." She scribbled something on a clipboard. Probably had a checklist.

Sherri continued her stream of pleasant, stale compliments in the kitchen. The body length bay window was something she'd always wanted in her own home. The floor was 'rustic yet new', and the counter tops, edge grain, because Stan said he wasn't good enough to make end grain, were of 'professional quality.'

_Marry her,_ Kyle thought, rolling his eyes, taking in the softness of Stan's eyes.

"It's good you put a lock on the sink cabinet. There are quite a few things that could poison a child."

She clicked the lock into its original place and looked to the ceiling, as though she expected to find knives hanging from the sheet rock. She opened the drawers, tested the faucet, and turned the stove on and off.

Kyle moved next to Stan, arms crossed, and laid his head lightly on his shoulder, only to be shrugged off. He stared at Stan, mouth open and eyes narrowed, and Stan just shook his head, his own expression a botched imitation, confusion and apprehension effacing any indignation.

Stan grabbed Kyle's hand.

_Oh, so now it's all right? Well, fuck you then._ But Kyle returned the grip, steadfast and silent, wishing he could muster the strength of Stan's now limp fingers, the arms that could hoist bags of garden gravel like they were pillows. Kyle curled his fingers, ineffectually; Stan just squeezed his hand as though to give him comfort.

Sherri turned back to them. Kyle smiled.

"How about we go to the bedroom now?"

He tugged Stan forward, finally earning something more than oblivious sympathy. Three steps forward. Four fingers. Three fingers. By the time they entered the bedroom, Kyle's hold consisted of his hand wrapped around Stan's middle finger. He released it and Stan massaged the joint, frowning.

"Well, here we are." The light against the white paint work and sheets was so bright Kyle had to squint. He could see the blue-black burl of Stan's barely existent stubble against his jaw and cheeks. The sight started to arouse him.

"We're planning on putting the crib here, in this corner." He gestured to where a dresser used to stand.

Kyle walked to his side of the bed, whispered, "And this is where I sucked Stan's dick about two hours ago. He tasted good."

Mercifully, neither Stan nor Sherri heard the comment, but Stan's eye still widened, watering against the glare of the light. He was against Kyle's side, his breath hot against his ear, hand on the small of his back.

"Dude, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Can we please just get through this and then..."

"Sure." Kyle spoke curtly. Sherri's a patient now. He has to assure her, make her feel comfortable, convince her that he's infinitely more knowledgeable and level headed than she could ever be.

"Stan's working on the crib already. Rosewood. It'll look even nicer than what's in the kitchen, and we'll know what we're getting is top quality."

Before Sherri could say anything, Kyle touched the wall.

"And we upped the rating on the insulation, so, warm in the winter, cool in the summer."

"Oh, of course." She spoke like someone being told the details of her illness in purely scientific terms.

Kyle lead them out of the bedroom after a few minutes; the bathroom passed, if only because Stan decided to store his straight edge razor in his desk drawer. Next Kyle suggested the lawn. They hadn't quite given into the stereotype of a white, picket fence, but Stan made a remark that, depending on how active the child is, they'll take a barrier under consideration.

_Put up a chain fence with barbed wire on top. Then we'll have a constant reminder of what we're in for._

Kyle let Stan take over in the description of the lawn. He went on about how much he liked to garden in the spring and summer, how Clyde would walk across the frost crusted lawn and give them tulips, complete with neatly written instructions slipped into white envelopes, detailing their proper care.

It's during that explanation that Sparky II runs across the lawn towards them. A beautiful dog. The words roll into the air, and Stan was explaining the breeds that give the dog his grey fur, pointed ears and mismatched eyes.

Sparky II ran to Kyle, expectantly. He licked his fingers, muzzle quivering in a friendly admixture of bark and growl. Kyle's fingers traced patterns on the top of his head. He always thought animals were too simple for proper company, but now, he'd rather it were just him and the dog, in the kitchen, while the morning plodded forward without them.

Minutes later they're on the front lawn. Kyle distracts himself from Sparky II long enough to point out Stan's work with the bushes. The brickwork is latticed by the sun.

"Now the garage..."

Kyle doesn't follow them. Stan will have to show that all his saws and drill bits and sanders are safely stowed away from small, prying hands.

He looked at Sparky II.

"What about you? You gonna grab a circular saw and kill us all at night?"

He received another lick.

Sherri emerged from the garage before Stan. She looked cautious, and Kyle wanted to say 'I'm sorry. But there's nothing more I can do for you. You have to see a specialist. The growth is probably malignant." He would have made his voice dull and flat at the last syllable, like a pastor pronouncing damnation upon his congregation.

She glanced towards the garage before speaking.

"Kyle, may I speak with you for a moment?"

"Sure." He shrugged and didn't move. "Right here is fine."

Sherri's face relaxed. She was a normal person now, her lips a neutral line.

"Kyle, do you want a child?"

The question didn't surprise him. It was a dense, painful inquiry. He saw a glint from the garage, probably Stan adjusting a circular saw. Come on, Stan. Tap your inner psychopath. We can dump the body in the pond.

"I do. I'm just not comfortable with this whole process of intrusion."

"Kyle, I know it can seem..."

"Please. Don't condescend to me. I've heard the pleasantries, and the reassurances, and they're good for Stan, but not for me." Kyle didn't wait for her response.

"One of my friends came from a shitty household. His dad was a drunk, and his mom stopped caring. They fought constantly. Once, when he was in middle school, I almost had my forehead split open by a flying bottle of Coors. My friend is the middle child of three. From your standpoint, he never should have been born."

"I never said that." Her voice was strained. She tried to be cold, but she defeated herself. Kyle might as well have struck her.

"You don't have to say anything. I've met social workers. You can say he never should have been born into that family, never raised by those parents, his parents. But that's how I knew him. That's how he grew up. And he survived. We were with him. He's better than me. So much better. If I were selfless and he were gay, I'd say he deserved Stan. But. That's not the way the world works." _If I were selfless._

Kyle swallowed as Stan came into view. He lowered his voice. "If this doesn't work out, then there'll be another way." _Black hair and grey eyes._

"Stan will be disappointed, he might be crushed for a while, but I'll make sure he gets through it. And if you make that decision, all right. But don't smile, don't be sympathetic, don't tell us how nice our house is, while you say we're not good enough."

He left her side abruptly. Stan substitutes for her seconds later. He might be offering comfort, might be acting by reflex. Kyle gave him no indication that he might have just jeopardized the entire process. Shredded two months of hard work and thumb nail mangling anxiety. Stan's work. Kyle's hands tremble again, but now he has to shove them in his pockets, press them against his thighs.

"The basement next?" Sherri is cordial again. Kyle would feel bad for her if she hadn't recovered so quickly.

"Sure." Kyle walked ahead of them both. He held his head high, as though he'd somehow taken the corresponding road.

### 

"Ten minutes, dude." Stan reminded him as he carried a bag of charcoal outside.

"Shouldn't you have started cooking like, half an hour ago?" But Kyle spoke to an open door. He returned to the paper. Stan got free copies, his reviews and op eds appearing at least once a month. Kyle checked the obituaries occasionally to see if anyone on the editorial board had died.

"OK, so I've got the grill set up. Beer's out on the table."

"Craig won't drink it." Kyle doesn't look up.

"Well, he can have orange juice then. I'm not serving liquor at a barbecue."

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah, of course. It kills the taste. I'm not gonna use home made barbecue sauce, just so Craig can guzzle Jameson after every bite."

"You make him sound like a dipso." Kyle turned the page. Something about tanking profits at ski resorts.

"I'm just going by observation. Is that today's paper?"

"Yeah. You wanna read something?" He looked up.

Stan grimaced. "There's an article in there about a rapist. He was caught last night, in Denver. In the act." Stan turned away, shaking his head.

Kyle flipped the paper to the front page. His mouth went dry.

Jason Cooper. Caught in a mall parking lot. He stared out from the grainy photo. A shock of red, tangled hair. His face splotched with purple. His eyes were blurred into a static of pixels.

Kyle closed the paper. _Red mixing with brown or blonde or black._

"That's fucked up," he muttered. Stan was outside again. He stood and walked down the hall, opened the front door and stood on the lawn. Another cloudless day. Bare. Glittering. Painful, eventually. Kyle thought his hair must look like a comic prop from a distance.

_Must be how Craig and Clyde found the place._

He waved as their car entered the drive, wasn't sure if Craig returned the gesture or just flipped him off. Old habits died hard, he supposed.

"Are you the welcoming party, or is Stan trying to put out a house fire?" Craig's voice was the same as always, deadpan and deep. His face was drawn up into an expression which seemed to mutely convey that his thoughts were too good to be shared with or interrupted by others. Then he brought out a brown paper bag, reached inside, and Kyle saw blue, shimmering in the clear air.

"I brought booze."

"And I brought my appetite." Clyde walked up next to Craig and pulled them together. Kyle always expected Craig to frown and distance himself, but there they stood, as openly affectionate as teenagers, as casually confident as old lovers. Kyle smiled, a small helpless expression.

"Stan will be glad to hear that, Clyde. I don't know how happy he'll be about the liquor."

"It's gin." Craig reached the door before Kyle, and let himself in, Clyde still close to his side.

Stan wasn't in the kitchen. He'd placed rows of quartered tomatoes, thick mozzarella slices, and prosciutto on a long a dish and left it on the table.

"Hm. Fancy." Craig peeled a piece of translucent meat off the edge of the plate and swallowed it whole.

"Medical business seems to be treating you pretty well." He tore into a chunk of cheese. Clyde set into the tomatoes.

"Enthralling us with the critiques of the cultural integrity of the country puts booze on the table too, it seems. How is the cultural integrity of the country, by the way?"

"Probably like the prosciutto." He picked up another piece and waved it like a mangled flag. "Flimsy and overrated." He swallowed the slice anyway. "But the aftertaste is good."

"I'll quote you on that."

Craig nodded. "Do. I'm gonna write an article, comparing our failing sense of morality to a piece of Italian deli meat. I'll put you giving Stan a blowjob as part of a photo column. The caption will be 'Is this who we're trusting kids to now a days?"

"Mhmm. And what? The meat will figure into that somehow?"

"Exactly. You should work for a newspaper."

_Then Stan and I could both be unemployed._

"And here's our host. Stan Marsh."

Stan smiled. "Hey Craig." They shook hands, both their grips tighter than necessary. Clyde gave Stan a one armed hug; pressed into one mass, Kyle figured they would have weighed at least two of him, plus one of Craig.

Craig raised the gin in front of Stan's face.

"I'm drinking this, instead of whatever shitty beer you have. You're welcome to join in."

Stan's expression was caught between a rebuttal and temptation. His eyes narrowed and he ran the tip of his tongue across his lips. He exhaled.

"You're an ass, Craig."

"Fine, but more for me."

"Hey, I said you're an ass. Not ungenerous. Half that bottle is mine."

"Half? I paid for this with my hard earned money. You've got a sugar daddy."

Stan spoke tightly. "Hear that Kyle? You're a sugar daddy."

Kyle didn't smile. "Please stop. This is starting to sound like a bad porno."

"No, Stan would need a mustache for that, and Clyde would need crotchless, leather pants and nipple piercings."

Clyde chuckled. "You're the one who tried the piercings, Craig."

"And for a month you got a boner every time I took my shirt off."

"OK, now that's too much, even for me. I've got..." He rolled his eyes. "I've got the meat on the grill."

Craig looked at Clyde. "You think there's anything suggestive in meat, Clyde?"

"Nope. Stan's got a dirty mind."

"Yeah, yeah. Diner'll be ready in about half an hour." He walked towards the lawn.

"Hey, where do you think you're going with that gin?"

"I'll save you half. You'll thank me when you're stuffing your face full of ribs."

"Ribs," Craig muttered.

"Too low brow?"

"I come from the same red neck, white trash town you do, Broflovski. I can handle some ribs."

"I think that speaks volumes about the cultural integrity of the country."

Clyde snorted as he took a swig of beer. Stan made no attempt to regulate their guests' access to the refrigerator.

Craig crossed his arms. "So I hear you and Stan are trying to sentence yourself to 25 to life, with a little bundle of debt and a large pile of shit."

Clyde winced, and Kyle felt his sympathy stir.

"We had a home visit last week. We're still waiting to hear back." Sherri was out of town on unexpected business. Kyle suspected part of that business entailed demanding that his reference reassure her that Kyle wasn't suffering from a personality disorder.

"How'd that go?" Clyde moved to Kyle's side of the kitchen to get a cheese slice. He pulled the chair out and sat down.

"She liked the house. She liked the yard. Hell, she liked the dog." _But maybe not the Jew._

"That's great." Clyde smiled, distantly, as though recalling a long past memory. "You thinking about a boy or a girl?"

Craig interrupted. "God, do we really have to talk about this now? I came here to eat and get drunk, not talk about hypothetical kids."

"He's not hypothetical. There's a woman out there who's pregnant with him right now." Clyde was staring at the plate, rotating his bottle against the now damp table. He should have had a coaster, Kyle thought dully.

"Him?" Craig stared at him, eyes wide. "Clyde, you're either clairvoyant, in which case why the hell am I still working, or you've given this way too much thought. " He scratched the back of his head. His hair was glossy and shaggy, not as thick as Stan's. It lent his face an almost oriental fineness. If he'd had the gin bottle, he probably would have been a quarter of the way down the glass.

Kyle cleared his throat, made eye contact with Clyde, who shook his head slowly, his face set.

"That's all on the adoption front. Let's go see if Stan needs help.

Clyde was out the door already. Kyle caught Craig's arm before he could step under the frame.

"Can I talk to you later, when Stan and Clyde are tossing a ball between them and the dog?"

Craig smiled at the certainty of his tone.

"Sure. What else do you think I'd be doing?"

Kyle nodded and released his arm. Stan was brushing something onto the ribs. He'd already set the table and placed out a bowl of roasted potatoes and a plate of grilled, portobello mushroom.

"I thought you said the mushrooms went better with steaks." He stood about a foot from Stan, hands in his pockets, awkwardly swaying back and forth like a reed. Streaked with red, he thought, morbidly. He looked at the gin, cap loosely placed, contents oscillating as Stan did his work.

Stan smiled. "Yeah, they do. But I had 'em, and wasn't going to waste them." He flipped the final rib and regarded the flames.

"Craig doesn't know that Clyde wants a kid, does he?"

Kyle's eyes narrowed against the stream of hot air from the grill.

"No. I'm going to talk to him about it."

"Dude, don't. It's not our business." Stan reached for the bottle and took a gulp. "Could use tonic."

"What are friends for, if not to stick their noses in each others' business?"

"I'm serious, Kyle. Craig isn't going to take it well."

"He didn't take it well when Clyde brought up our adoption process. I know how to talk to him." _But not to you, apparently._

Stan turned his head. Kyle wanted to touch his face. He smiled at the instantaneous realization that he could, and he did. He traced Stan's cheek bone with his thumb.

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

Kyle shrugged.

"PDA. Enough." Craig took the bottle, tilted it against his lips.

"I'm not done with that yet." Stan made a half assed attempt at grabbing the bottle, but Craig took a step back.

"Yeah you are." He walked to the table. Clyde was seated next to him, but his back was straight, his hands on the table, palms down.

Kyle withdrew his hand. "I'm getting a beer."

Thirty minutes later, Kyle had a lazy buzz, his motions fluid but languid. His limbs felt like they'd been filled with warm, dense liquid.

Stan, fingers sticky and sweet, leaned forward, blocking access to the last remaining ribs and one lonely mushroom. Kyle felt the urge to eat it and put it out of its misery.

"No, fuck Tim Teebow. I almost stopped being a Broncos fan because of all the hokey religious shit he pulled. Separation of church and football."

Clyde laughed. "Come on. It was funny as hell, and he was a decent quarterback."

"Fuck you, Clyde. You did not just say that." He turned his head. "Craig? Did he just say that?"

"Fuck football."

"Fine. You and Kyle can go get hitched." He waved his hand. "I know someone who loves me." He tore a bone off the rib and held it in the air. "Come on Spark. Come get it." He raised the prize just out of the dog's reach. Once, twice. Then he sent it spinning through the air.

"Yes!" Stan jumped out of his seat, fists pumping as Sparky II caught the bone out of the air. "Now that's a dog."

"Wonderful, Marsh." Craig had decided even he couldn't forgo a glass at the table. He drained it and stood.

"Kyle, why don't you show me where..." He made a vague gesture. "Fuck it, just come in with me."

Clyde laughed. "That's what Craig said after our first date, when were at the door. Subtle and sweet."

"Go, go," Stan said. "You take Craig, I'll take Clyde. He at least likes football.

"Fine, but Clyde likes it rough, and he's not really in a position to bottom."

Craig slammed the door on Clyde's rebuttal. The sun was low in the sky, orange bleeding into red, the light soft. If they were on a date, Kyle would have complimented Craig on his timing and choice of location.

"I'm gonna go out on a limb and say there's more gin somewhere around here." Craig took a seat in front of the kitchen counter.

Kyle nodded slowly. "Yeah. You sure you want more?"

"Clyde will drive. He doesn't get drunk that often. And this isn't one of those nights."

"How do you know?" Kyle asked as he got a fresh bottle of gin. He twisted the cap off and set the bottle in front of Craig.

"Clyde only gets drunk at parties when he's bored. And he can get a lot out of life." He filled a quarter of the glass. "That's Clyde." Another gulp. "Got any tonic?"

"I'll get it later." Kyle decided his blood sugar could handle a few sips. "You've been working out, haven't you?" He leaned closer to Craig's forearm.

"Broflovski, I know Stan said I could have you, but you're not my type. It's the Jew thing. You bastards are really ruining this country."

"Yeah, probably. But, you have been, right?"

"Working out? Sure. Good stress relief. I'm not as beefy as Captain America out there, but I'm not a stick figure."

Kyle spit his gin laughing. "Stan actually dressed like Captain America last Halloween. That spandex left nothing to the imagination."

"Who were you? Wonder Woman?"

"Fuck you, Craig. I was the Green Lantern."

"Wonderful."

Kyle could hear the sounds of Stan and Clyde and the dog, shouting, running and barking. It sounded like the all American cliché, all dick version. All that was missing was the kid, trying to catch the dog, asking daddy to pick him up. _And maybe there'd be another red head out there now. A bastard._

"Why are you such a dick to Clyde about kids?"

Craig exhaled. It was more a hiss, like he'd been burned.

"Christ, my sister asked me the same thing."

"And what'd you say?"

"I told her to fuck off and mind her own business."

So Stan might have been right. "You could tell me."

"And then we could paint our nails and talk about boys."

"That too."

Craig gave him a dirty look, then obscured it with his glass. He'd lost his expression of arrogant detachment, replaced it with one of sullen delirium, like he was in the grip of a mounting fever.

"I'm selfish." He said it with finality, as though that closed the topic.

Kyle waited for more. Craig titled his head and looked at the ceiling.

"That's it?"

"What else is there to say? I said it in English, right? I feel like I'm in the fucking principal's office again, having to explain why I punched some idiot in the face. I gave you a simple answer."

Kyle didn't say anything. Stan would have poured everything out. He wouldn't even be having this conversation with Stan. It would have come naturally.

"I love Clyde."

Craig could have said he was the Messiah reincarnated, whole in the flesh and blood and bone, and Kyle would have been able to restrain the spasm of his face.

The fever in Craig's face and eyes flared. "Don't you dare look surprised. I'm an ass to him sometimes, I know. But I love him. That's all there is to it."

Kyle couldn't make eye contact now. Of course, Craig...of course. Kyle didn't have a monopoly on love in its entirety. Just Stan's.

"One job. My dad worked. My mom didn't. They had me and my sister, and we barely made it by. Fucking foodstamps." He poured more gin on the melting ice cubes. They clinked against the glass.

"I like booze. I like restaurants. And I like going on vacation at least once a year."

"And having Clyde happy." Simple, of course. Axiomatic.

Craig nodded. "You catch on fast. Jew genes." He joined his hands, lacing his fingers together. "Craig and Clyde. I'd kick everyone else to the curb, let them drop off into a canyon, you and Stan included, just for him, you know that. Of course."

Kyle would do the same for Stan. Stan for him. Fuck Craig and Clyde and Wendey and...No. Not all of Stan's love. He didn't have it all. Stan would stubbornly say he'd save everyone, even if it killed him. So would Kenny. Kenny and Stan. God. Together. Together they would...

Kyle's hands started to shake.

"And what about what Clyde wants?" It sounded hideous, old, dead, coming out of his mouth.

"It's not about compromise." Craig almost shouts. "He didn't even tell me. Not directly. I had to hear him talk about your possible kid, and add it up with everything else he said before, and then it clicked. At a party. A party." He muttered into the glass.

"Talk to him. There. There's my simple answer."

"Yeah, just like we're talking now. Bottom line: I don't want kids. The fucking time sink, Kyle. Time. Money, OK. You make it, you lose it, you make it again. But god, youth. We're only young once, and I'm not sacrificing youth in exchange for a mantra of 'daddy, daddy, daddy,' and someone to push me off a cliff when I'm too old to wipe my own ass."

It was as impassioned a speech as Kyle had ever heard Craig give, and he was helpless before it, except to utter the same withered words.

"Talk to him, Craig. At least acknowledge what he wants. Otherwise, yeah. You're selfish. And that's all you are."

Craig's expression turned dangerous. The same face he still had into high school, when he carried a knife with him everywhere he went, and knew how to use it. When Christope the exchange student had made a remark about 'pussy, God fearing Americans' and Craig, in an unbridled fit of patriotism, had added a scar to the Frenchman's already impressive array.

Kyle drank from his glass, but didn't avoid Craig's eyes, not this time. The moment of fury passed, and Craig relinquished his grip on the glass.

"I just put it all together today," Craig said. He would have sounded guilty and bashful, if only Kyle's mind would accept that combination of emotions.

"Fair enough." He saw Stan and Clyde approaching from the window. Stan was shirtless and covered in grass and dirt.

"And Stan wants to artificially inseminate Wendy with his spooge."

Craig choked on his drink.

### 

Kyle had been told by an obnoxious party to take a page out of his own book and talk to Wendy, face to face, eye to eye. For all his recalcitrance and proclaimed indifference, he waited almost two weeks, took off work early and drove to Denver. The drive would have taken all of forty five minutes in perfect conditions. As it stood, he'd spent over an hour stuck in traffic, because everyone in front of him slowed to stare at the crumpled remains of two overturned cars. The cars were entwined, crushed together as a couple, the sides folded like aluminum sheets. As he passed, perpendicular to the wreckage, the shattered panes of glass caught the light. Kyle recoiled as though he'd been punched; his left eye watered, purple splotches occluding his vision.

Kyle rubbed his eye and changed lanes. The traffic had loosened, and he didn't want to keep to the left. Stan didn't know he'd gone to see Wendy. So he'd only taken part of his own advice. So that made him a partial hypocrite. It wouldn't be the first or last time. Craig got along just fine, with the mass of grudges and resentments he'd horded over the years. But he and Christophe were on speaking terms. They went to the shooting range and pretended the paper targets were coworkers. Or God. Or Jesus. Or the apostles. Another of Craig's drunken confessions.

He turned onto 270, heading to merge onto 70. Fifteen minutes later, he parked in front of a two story, colonial style house, paneled with white clapboard siding, the windows flanked by dark blue shutters. The lawn was just a few feet of green strips, truncating abruptly at the sidewalk. Those few lines of green had gone unattended for at least a few days. Kyle moved along the drive and walkway to reach the door. It was painted the same color as the shutters.

Wendy answered the door after one press of the bell.

"Kyle?" All shock. Her face froze with it, and didn't release, even in the wake of Kyle's greeting.

She only nodded when he asked if he could come in. All the curtains were thrown open. The walls were white, the floors carpeted. Kyle curled his toes against the fibers, his socks too thin to offer much protection. Even he wanted to start ripping the carpet, replace it with floorboards. Solid, reliable.

"What's this visit about, Kyle?" Wendy crossed her arms over her chest, as though cold. Her eyes were sunken.

Get it over with, Craig had said.

"Stan."

Kyle walked around the living room. Two chairs on either side of a couch. Blue cloth draped over wood frames. A long, rectangular table in the center. Probably plywood, Kyle thought as he ran his fingertips across the surface. Stan wouldn't have approved.

"What about Stan? Is he all right?" She didn't approach him, but Kyle could hear the strain in her voice. Another patient.

"He's fine. Fine." Kyle looked out the window. He never would have been able to live in a regular house with such a small lawn. _Might as well have an apartment._

"You and Stan talked. A few weeks ago." He went through the motions. 'We talked a few weeks ago. Your test results indicate...'

"Stan and I talk a lot." She pressed her arms more tightly around herself. She wasn't looking at him. She took a step back.

Kyle frowned. _She's wearing a long sleeved shirt._

"Wendy, is..."

"Kyle, just please tell me what you want to say." Her head whipped up, and this time Kyle took a step back.

"Stan told me about the problem you've been having with conception. He also said he suggested that he might donate some of his sperm to help." There fine. Technical enough to be innocuous, but not opaque.

Wendy laughed.

"That won't be a problem anymore."

Kyle opened his mouth in silent incomprehension for a few moments.

"You're a doctor, Kyle. You should know what conception is."

He stepped forward. His skin prickled. "You mean..."

"Yes. A baby," she said, her voice wavering.

"Oh. Well. Congratulations." He spoke from memory.

Wendy gasped, then slowly shook her head. Kyle's heart started pounding. He started to sweat. The realization clawed at the periphery of his awareness as the lock clicked.

"Wendy?" The voice was breathless, deep and tinged with fear. Kyle heard the thundering footsteps but didn't move.

"What the hell is he doing here?"

"Eric..."

And then he was roaring.

"Get out. Get out. Get the fuck out you filthy ginger kike!" His face twisted, sweating and red and swelling.

Kyle didn't move. He never broke his line of sight with Wendy. She never looked at him.

The room trembled and Kyle's face exploded in a burst of pain and white. He hit the table and it buckled against his weight and he could do nothing except lie prone against the broken pieces.

"Eric, stop!"

Kyle could hear the ragged breathing above him, knew the danger. His face stung and burned. It would swell, the flesh would bruise and expand, fill with blood. Purple splotches. He sat up, not caring where his hand fell.

Wendy. She was trembling. Wendy. Fuck, she was trembling. Kyle's hand started to shake. He'd told her, he'd congratulated her.

Kyle's hand slapped against his mouth, vice like, as thought he could transcend time and space with hindsight."

"I'm sorry. I'm so..." His words stuck. He still had his hand over his mouth.

"Get out." Cartman said, barely comprehensible.

Kyle turned his head, saw a large, powerful beast.

Slowly, he rose from the ruins of the living room. Dust swirled in the air, caught in the sun. His face throbbed. He saw purple in his left eye.

Cartman turned from him, started walking.

Maybe to get a bat. A bat to smash his head in with, to paint the walls red. _Red. Mixed with white and Black. No black hair and grey eyes. A shock red hair and blurred out eyes. Caught in the act._

Kyle couldn't look. Not up or around. He stumbled outside, into the light. His eyes watered, his hands trembled. He touched the car and his stomach clenched. He bowed his head and heaved, scorched his throat. He couldn't...

_Stan. Stan. Stan. What do I say, what do I...You won't have a beautiful, black haired baby._ His vision blurred again.

He couldn't have said anything to either of them even if he'd tried.


	3. Chapter 3

"Man, I don't know why you chose this profession. You're either working your ass down to a nub, or you're bored out of your skull, doing jack shit. Pick one and stick with it."

Kyle clicked through another patient record, rubbing his unbruised eye with a free hand. Meeting up with Kenny always made him feel ten years older.

"It puts food on the table and money in the IRA. I don't know what else a job is supposed to do, practically speaking." The answer wouldn't satisfy Kenny, but it was all Kyle could give him, something meager and lean.

 _Better than what I gave Wendy. The Annunciation from hell._ 'Congratulations, you were raped." Kyle pounded the escape key when a file wouldn't close.

"You all right?" Kenny leaned in, bright eyes and bright hair, his outside reflecting his inside, like an impossibly formed crystal.

"Fine. Just tired." That was true, at least. He hadn't slept well for the past week. Currently he wrote it off as work related stress, and thankfully, Stan was buying it, for the moment, just like he bought the story about Kyle's eye. A mugging where he'd lost his wallet. After that false admission, Stan was all manly bravado and pent up rage, going into tedious prolixity about the rising crime rate in Fort Collins, then about lax police officers, all the while practically suffocating Kyle with an ice pack. Stan hadn't let up his newly found concern since. Maybe it was because it gave him an excuse to be more attentive in the bedroom, as liberal with his mouth as he usually was with his hands, and Kyle couldn't complain, not when black slid into red, instead of the other way around, and that thought was all that kept him from climbing into the bed every night and choking himself on his fist.

"I should really get help."

"For yourself, or for your work?" By now Kenny was on the same side of the desk, trying to make Kyle the patient, something he hadn't allowed anyone to do since he'd left high school.

And Kenny. Kenny hadn't said anything about the injury, just given him a long, appraising look, probably the same one he gave his students when they turned in a flimsy excuse in lieu of their latest assignment. Kyle knew Kenny's reserve was grimly won from all the times he'd arrived at school with a fresh bruise or oozing cut, his demands for Kyle and Stan's discretion dolled out curtly and bluntly, usually rounding off with a pleasant, 'fuck off and mind your own business.'

_A man after Craig's heart. Wonder if they ever considered fucking._

Kyle deflected his friend's concern with a vague gesture to his computer screen.

"For this. My job isn't as boring as you think. And speaking of which, shouldn't you be out there somewhere, teaching young minds?" He didn't care now. He really didn't, but that was the only thing Kyle could think to say.

"Nah. School's out." Kenny said the words with the same quirk of his mouth, the same tincture lift of his eyebrow, that he assumed when he and Stan and Kyle were all still in high school, the combined expression bordering on flirtatious, in Kyle's mind.

Kenny was attractive. Kyle had always thought so. In neutral terms, if he'd seen Kenny's doppelganger walking the streets in an alternate line of existence, he would have been taken in by him, first physically, then mentally. He'd told Stan, years ago, when they'd been together long enough that the confession would be worth nothing more than a laugh and an excuse to recall fond memories. With his basic attraction lingering, Kyle still couldn't fathom how Kenny managed to remain chronically single.

"Lucky you." Kyle closed the file, probably disappointing his audience. Herpes would probably never fail to make Kenny snicker. Luckily he'd scrolled far enough down that the patient's name was lost on the preceding page.

"I'm having them read Gilgamesh now. I figure I'll start with something short and punchy to get them interested."

"And then what? Bury them in boring shit they won't remember a month after they've finished reading it?" Kyle still had an hour left on his shift, and no patients in sight.

"My students never forget what I teach them." Kenny spoke with easy confidence. He probably believed every word.

"Hmm. Right." Kyle looked Kenny full in the face, and for an instant his entire previous life shrank to a point, and it was just the two of them in an office, and Kyle wished that they weren't friends, that they were just indulging each others' basic, desperate desires, rubbing away at insecurities, no questions. Kenny kept his thick hair short, so it barely brushed his ears, but he didn't cleanly shave, and his chin and cheeks shined with fine grains of gold. Kyle tried to grasp the feeling of that stubble against his smooth cheek, the way Kenny's quick, thin fingers might feel around his nipples.

The fantasy dissolved before Kyle's scrutiny. There was no shame. There never was. Kenny is attractive, yes. But they would never be compatible, sexually or otherwise. What was pure attraction in the face of years of understanding, acceptance, and love? He loved Kenny. But never the way he'd love Stan. Craig's sentiment, kicking everyone else besides Clyde to the curb, was blunt and brutal and true.

_But aren't kids supposed to supersede even that devotion?_

Kyle's mother had told him, when she and his father had dropped him off for the first day of college, that she would always, always, make sure her children were happy and safe and successful, even if it meant dashing her own happiness. And that meant his father, too. They came as a pair, and would fall as one.

_Is Wendy going to feel the same about her bastard? Is Cartman going to take off work to look after some other man's child, during flu season? Is he going to fork out tuition and car insurance payments, and read stories? Donate a kidney? Sink into oblivion? All for a red haired bastard. All for a child that isn't even mine._

"It's always death with you." Kyle hadn't broken eye contact. He wanted desperately for Kenny to tell him something, if even unintentionally, that might assuage his doubts.

_Give me a verbal blow job, Kenny._

"Homer, Dante. Even The Pearl. Those are the only types of books you assign." Kyle finally turned away.

"Those are the only books worth reading. Death and life. You can't have one without the other. I don't really understand or care about books that don't have to do with death." Kenny spoke quietly and simply; he was probably a teacher now, and Kyle the student. "And when I say death...it's not just death, in itself. It's survival. It's fear. It's respect. It's love, and compassion and devotion, it's living, in spite of the inevitability of death."

"You're not afraid of death." Kyle had never thought of his own feelings regarding the subject. He only remembered that whenever anyone had put up money for someone to do something dangerously stupid, Kenny volunteered without a hitch, as though resigned all along to the very inevitability he had just finished speaking of.

Kenny shook his head, smiling.

"I can't think of anything more stupid to be afraid of. It's the one thing that's basically totally out of your control."

_Control. I could use some of that, even just over myself, never mind everyone else._

"Is that what you tell your students?"

"More or less. A lot of them probably think I'm a little crazy, but hey. If they listen to me, I don't really care."

Kyle lowered his head to rub his eyes with the heels of his palms, until he remembered he'd be basically be mashing Cartman's fist into his face all over again. He kept his face lowered, as though in supplication. Yes. That sounded about right, as his next words formed in his mouth.

"You still single?"

Kenny paused, probably surprised at the break in topic. His body weight shifted, and Kyle could smell his cologne. It reminded him of pine scented mountain paths, even though there was nothing in the scent to hint an arboreal addition.

"Well...yeah and no. I'm not really dating anyone so much as fucking Bebe."

The whole sentence was exaggeration, from the way Kenny hesitated, to his emphasis on the word of commitment.

Kyle turned to him.

"Isn't she still shacked up with Christophe?"

"Yup. Since before she finished college. She and him started fooling around in high school though, from what I hear. I think that was somewhere around the time Clyde realized he preferred Craig's cock to Bebe's cooch."

"It's the other way around," Kyle muttered, not sure what he was trying to get at.

"Hm?"

Kyle sighed. "I heard from a very reliable source that in the bedroom, Craig's on the receiving end of a cock."

Kenny's smile turned from casual to coruscating. "Oh really now? Well, well, well..."

"Goddammit, Kenny. Grow up." Now he practically was ten years older, except Kenny had rescinded his age in favor of becoming a college student again.

"Ah, don't be so serious. Anyway, Bebe's with Christophe, no question. But she still likes me, at least in the bedroom, and I've never said no to a great pair of tits."

"Even when those tits are are in a relationship with someone else?" The conversation was straight from high school, but Kyle didn't mind. He felt relaxed for the first time in months.

"I'd never engage in a lascivious rendezvous with otherwise engaged nichons." He dragged out the word, his accent over indulged but confident.

Kyle frowned, his lips parting.

"Christophe knows?" He lowered his voice, like both Bebe and her lover were outside, ears pressed to the door.

Kenny winked. "I'd have taken French, instead of German in college, if I'd known how much fun it was. You'd think Berlioz and Poulenc would have taught me better, but such is life. Christophe's a good teacher, though. I'd recommend him if it wouldn't get me an immediate appointment with Stan's fist. And probably some morals charges thrown in. Who knows?"

Kyle had stopped listening after 'Christophe' and 'teacher' had coalesced into an image of Kenny on his knees, mouth and tongue wetly ensconcing Christophe up to the base, while the Frenchman nodded and gave complements and detraction on Kenny's technique, all the while writing on a clipboard.

"Oho. Having dirty thoughts, are we Kyle?" Kenny teased lightly.

"I...didn't know you swung that way."

"I don't. But you'd be surprised what you find enjoyable, when you're riding on adrenaline and lust."

Kyle's stoicism crumbled and he flinched.

"Don't say that."

_Caught in the act. Probably still hard after he'd pulled out, still wet from her. God, and I congratulated her._

Kenny spoke calmly.

"I'd say something about confidentiality, but I think you get the gist of that concept."

Kyle didn't say anything. He couldn't, not yet, not with the bubble of poison obstructing his throat. He swallowed and his Adam's Apple trembled in the aftermath. Kenny waited patiently, familiar with painful confessions, letting the origin of injuries come to light only after they'd faded to tan beneath his skin.

"Wendy," he said, as thought her name encapsulated the entirety of last week's events; no the events of the last six months. Kyle moved his hands in mutilated circles, ran his tongue across his top teeth. He took a deep breath, something he'd once heard an acquaintance of Stan call 'cleansing,' and for once mockery died in Kyle's mind.

"She's not well." And he racked his fingers down his throat, as though wanting to carve red, ragged lines down his pale skin.

Kenny started to speak, but Kyle finally moved to action.

"It's not terminal. It's not an illness."

_But it could mimic one._

"Cartman?" Kenny was already making connections, his levity replaced by something solid and implacable, and Kyle was again reminded of Craig at his most dangerous.

Kyle laughed.

"No, it's not him." _But it would be easy if it were. Predictable, even. Everyone would expect him to stoop that low, and everyone would expect me to accuse him. We should have gotten hitched._

He shuddered. "He did give me the black eye though."

"Then, what? If Cartman isn't abusive, then why did he punch you?"

Kyle lowered his arms. "It's not for me to say. I deserved it though, the punch."

Kenny was in front of him, angry and forceful.

"Bullshit, Kyle. Unless you attacked Wendy, fata- Cartman, had no right to punch you in the face." He shook his head, his anger burning brilliantly in his eyes. "That fucker."

"Don't be angry at him. If you...well, I'm sorry, Ken. I can't tell you. Only Wendy can."

Kenny returned to his seat, down but not out. He folded his hands and rested his chin on them.

"And Stan doesn't know anymore than I do?"

"Less. I told him I got mugged. He told you, didn't he?"

"I figured you might have said something in the last day or two." Kyle wanted to laugh again. It would sound awful, but he wanted to. Always wanting.

"I fucked up. I really, really fucked up."

"How? Look, whatever happened with Wendy..."

Kyle waved his hand. "Not with Wendy. With Stan. All right, with Stan." Stan Stan Stan Stan. His name could be Kyle's mantra until he ascended to Nirvana or descended to the underworld. Stan. He could compress everything into that name, his touch, his smell, his eyes, his quivering, raw voice after a heated argument, when he was always, always the first to apologize, even if Kyle was the one in the wrong. Stan. Black hair and blue grey eyes, like the child that would never be his, because he was willing to give his own child away to make someone else happy.

Kyle's hands occluded his face now. He didn't want Kenny's brightness intruding upon his solitude. Not that it mattered, because he was forced to move his hands and open his eyes anyway, when Kenny pulled them away.

"Kyle. Come on. Don't do this. It's bullshit and you know it."

"Stan is very tolerant. If it were me...I think I would have left a while ago."

Kenny stilled, and Kyle was sure his eyes would match within moments. Instead, he was treated to another full view of Kenny's appraisal, and Kyle was certain now that it was this look which made Kenny such a successful teacher, his expression more calm and detached and critical than any parent could hope to muster.

"Then why haven't you?"

The simple question cut to the quick of Kyle's defenses, and he lowered his head, searching for something in the ruffles of the carpet.

"He wants this so badly, Kenny, and I'm just going along with for the ride. I'm doing it because..." He raised his head. They both knew the answer.

Kenny didn't speak until Kyle returned from the drinking fountain; his mouth felt like it had been packed with sand.

"I came here for free condoms."

Kenny made the statement with levity, leaned back in his chair and made eyes at the ceiling.

Kyle staggered; he couldn't decide if the comment was wildly inappropriate, or Kenny trying desperately to switch topics. Just as he was about to retort with another demand that his friend to finally act his age, Kyle smiled, phantom hands stretching his lips and pressing levity into his dour, morbid spirit.

Kenny continued, "Bebe and I had a scare back in high school, and Christophe, the stereotypical bastard, is virile enough to put me to shame."

Kyle laughed into his hand.

"God, Kenny." He snorted another laugh. And another. In a few moments he was in tears, his throat and chest burning. He hadn't laughed so hard since Cartman had somehow managed to sit on his own balls in junior year.

"I still don't know what the fuck to do."

Kenny's comment mitigated none of his uncertainty.

"Nothing to do. Face the truth. Weather the shit storm. Or run like hell. I've done both. Can't say the latter doesn't have its upsides."

_Run._

Across almost three thousand miles of God's country. It sounded like an offer of pure salvation and heaven, wrought from the stuff of legend and heavy summer nostalgia. He could set himself up as a traveling physician, catering to the forgotten towns and basins; he'd seclude himself in the flat agricultural expanse of the Midwest, an inversion of South Park, before moving to the cold recess of the Finger Lakes. Long winters and lingering, beautiful autumns, the clear sky reflected on water.

Stan would love it.

And his indulgence crumbled.

_Run from Stan._

Kyle knew before he'd even started the legendary journey that Stan couldn't be part of his story, and in a single act of cowardice and glaring indifference, he would rend the last twenty years of their lives asunder, cleanly and irrevocably, like a hewn limb. They'd survive, their wounds grotesque and burning but not fatal, Kyle clinical and detached, following a prescribed regiment to convalescence, Stan wretched and reeling and then quietly stoic.

"It's going to be harder for Stan, no matter what I do."

Kenny stood and closed the gap between them. He squeezed Kyle's shoulder, as only a friend could manage. "You and Stan will make it through. One way or another."

Kyle could only wish for Kenny's confidence, as he always had.

### 

Weight and warmth and smell and wet breaths. A soft press on his shoulder; a hot and rapidly cooling path along his spine.

Coward...I' m supposed to tell him.

"Stan.." A masked call for attention, a voice lost in the palpitations of unrequited need.

Stan's hands on his sides, thumbs digging into his back.

They'll probably reach all the way around. That's how big they are.

He remembers he's a coward and squeezes his eyes shut. Heat pools in his back and seeps through to his groin, long fingers of it reaching up his abdomen as Stan sinks into him.

"S...Stan."

He's trembling. He never trembles. Fear. Fear and trembling, he remembers. He remembers his awful duality of choice and he can't stop.

_Coward. Liar. Liar. Red haired, worthless, fucking. Bastard. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK._

"Hey, hey. Shhhh." Stan's head and face descend until Kyle is full of it, the thick and sticky musk of them tangled and nearly mindless. Full of Stan's scent, full of Stan. His sweaty hair, his sweaty, hairy chest and stomach and arms and armpits and legs. Stan's fingers brush his face, stroke his cheek and abscond with his quacking.

"Oh...GOD."

He might be crying. He doesn't know.

_Coward. Stan wants. He wants. He could have had a normal life, a fucking kid with Wendy. And..._

His back arches and he cries something. It doesn't matter what, not when Stan's head is a ragged weight on his shoulder, when Stan's hand had found its way around his length and brought him within bare moments of simultaneous climax.

The heat and sweat linger on his body long after he's spent. He's sprawled across Stan's prone form, the fan spinning tightly and noiselessly above their heads. He imagines Stan smiling his stupid, careless and carefree post coital smile, thinks it will probably follow him into sleep. He imagines his life as a peripatetic, moving from empty apartment to empty apartment, sterile room to sterile room, patient to patient. An aging mass of complexes.

In a rash of desperation, his face tight with repressed agony, he grabs Stan's hand.

Stan makes a low, pleasant noise, a sleep laden chuckle.

"'Nything wrong?"

"I don't want..." His words clog his throat, cementing it with bile.

Stan shifts and turns his head. Kyle can feel his eyes on him.

Kyle speaks in a rush, the same impetus of terror and uncertainty and inexperience driving him, when they'd first given themselves to each other. Only now, he's closed himself off to the response.

"I think I love you."

### 

It's no good. He can't run away, even as he sees Wendy approaching the desk from the parking lot. He'd agreed to monitor the desk for the fifteen minutes it would take the receptionist to get out of traffic and make it back from her break.

The doors opened and seemed to push her towards him, like a rushing tide, a mythical goddess of woe and disaster. He imagined her wielding a slender trident of gleaming, unblemished silver, her hair falling behind her in long, ebony waves. He recalled Stan's hair, and the fantasy shriveled.

"Hi Kyle." She placed her hands in front of her, one over the other, like she should have been wearing a school girl's outfit and standing by the steps, waiting for her boyfriend.

Kyle had to force a smile at the thought. "Hey."

He looked behind her, as though Cartman might have given himself bathroom gastric bypass and pasted himself to her back.

Wendy just smiled, small and sad.

"Eric's not here. He's not around, I mean."

"Right. I should have known; I'd probably be flat on the floor again." He tried to make his voice light. He winced. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

"No, Kyle...he had no right to hit you."

_You would have hit me if you'd know what was going through my head._

Neither spoke, and Wendy didn't remove her hands. Kyle thought she might be shielding her womb from him, from everyone, her body contorted by guilt and secret fear.

His eyes widened as the possibility hit him, the possible burden his profession might exact on him, another wight on his already dilapidated psyche.

Kyle reached forward with his hand; whether to allay her fears or forestall her actions, he didn't know. He simply had to say something, and not damn himself to complacent silence.

"I'm keeping it." Wendy's words snapped through Kyle's fledgling connection like a guillotine blade.

Kyle swallowed. "That's..." He stalled. "I'm sorry."

"I haven't told Eric. I don't even know what he'll say."

 _And you probably don't want to know._ Kyle took in Wendy, her face, her eyes, her arms. Her breasts. Pregnancy would suit her. She'd follow a strict, proper diet. Shun fats and sugars. Embrace protein. She'd probably buy a juicer and amalgamate piles of fruit, for careful, free flowing concoctions. And her lips would plump, their color deepen, like a flower ripening, along with her cheeks. Her whole body would go through a carefully planed metamorphosis, a biological conspiracy designed solely to make her as appealing to her husband even as her figure was subsumed by the needs of a foreign, unwanted being.

Kyle wanted to make his face into something sympathetic, to force the skin of an actor onto himself, and onto that graft the role of the gallant gentlemen. But when Wendy spoke again, he was still a general practitioner, in a Fort Collins clinic, wearing crumpled green scrubs. And the lights glared in his face.

"I guess we'll never know if...if Stan's idea would have worked." Her voice diminished as she went on.

"No." No, they wouldn't see a beautiful, black haired baby. Wendy would never be transformed by Stan's body. Kyle's eyes met Wendy's. She is beautiful. Then he smiled.

"You'll be wonderful either way. A wonderful mother." It sounded awful, but Wendy merely acquiesced. Kyle frowned.

"Cartman...he isn't being..." He'd done this before. Ma'm, these bruises, they're consistent with physical abuse. Anything you tell me is in the strictest confidence...

"Oh, no." She sounded so level, not overly emphatic, not defensive. Just plain. Then she hesitated.

"Actually," and she leaned closer, "when we make love, he likes to be...emasculated."

Kyle would have laughed, only a week ago. He would have ran outside, on his first break, dialed Stan, and, standing under the eaves, for the world to see and hear, laughed with him over the phone. His new reference frame had dilated that week into a century. Now he could only give her a lingering stare.

"Why are you telling me this?"

She shrugged, laughing self consciously. "I don't know. I don't know what else to say."

Kyle spread his hands out on the table and considered them, as if they held the secrets to all the mysteries of his life. He'd stemmed the flow of arterial blood from a man's throat with his left hand. He'd brought Stan to climax almost every night for the last ten years, his fingers always slick, sure catalysts. He'd scrawled half a thousand prescriptions for Doxycycline and Cephalosporin.

"Usually," and his voice was quiet and his eyes never left his hands, "Stan takes the lead in bed. It's just more relaxing for both of us that way. He..." Kyle laughed. "He still gives more than he gets."

Wendy's voice seems distant, like a fluorescent light shinning through a rain blurred window.

"It's like that for Eric. It's relaxing for him. And even for me."

Kyle simply nods. "It's his hands. When they're on my back. His thumbs, especially. You know his hands are..."

"Large."

Kyle met her eyes again; they were gray. He didn't know whether it was Stan, Stan's hands from high school, or Cartman's, that she was remembering. Did she think of Stan while Cartman's hands brushed her face and nipples, when they made her wet?

Kyle's hand tightened into a fist at the thought. Infidelity carried across through time and space, another reference frame cut and pasted, only now it was Wendy trying to take some of Stan's love, to preserve it for herself alone, even in the midst of her own marriage.

_Stan wouldn't mind. He'd smile and say that was her right, if it made her happy, and he'd be happy at being able to bring a moment of solace into someone's life._

"I haven't told Stan." _And what, am I supposed to be proud of myself?_

Wendy nodded, her sleep starved face sallow under the florescent lights. The pregnancy would alleviate that look. Kyle shuddered.

"I'll tell him. I just...I don't know. I never thought something like this would happen." She laughed, not knowing what else to do.

"It's something I would hear about, and I'd be afraid for a few minutes, but then I'd forget about it and keep on going. And even now, I guess, I'm just going to have to keep on going."

 _I can't go on, I'll go on._ Beckett. Kenny's favorite quote. An author who's novels he'd spared with students from.

"But you can't forget."

"No, of course not. But I have to keep going. I'm going to be a mother."

It was a weak statement, like the smile she offered, but at least she didn't cringe from it, even as Kyle was cowering from his own situation.

"I don't want kids."

_There. Finally._

The catharsis was almost sexual, and he shuddered as he repeated the words to himself, finally free of them.

Wendy sighed.

"I know. Kyle. Tell Stan. He deserves to know. He'd tell you anything. That's how he is. He loves you."

Shame colored Kyle's face and dried his mouth. Wendy had no reason to be anything but blunt with him, close as they now were with their shared knowledge of her decision.

"I don't really deserve him, do I?"

Now Wendy frowned, her eyes narrowing.

"We're a little old for that kind of crap, don't you think Kyle? Cut it and act like an adult. I'm telling Eric after I meet with my parents. And whatever comes, well...I'll have to go on. So will you."

"That's life," Kyle muttered. And then he couldn't stand the somber tone of their conversation any longer, and said,

"You know, Kenny and Bebe and Christope are in some kind of fucked up threesome?"

Wendy laughed, genuinely.

"Oh god, I know. Bebe calls me and compares their performances. It's awful, but I just can't stop myself from listening."

"Something tells me Kenny and Christophe might end up killing each other trying to out man the other if they ever found out about those conversations."

"It's really the one place where he's competitive. Apparently Christope is longer, but Kenny is thicker around."

Kyle nodded in mock appreciation. "Something I've always wanted to know."

They laughed together, and Kyle briefly wanted Stan to walk through the door too, so the three of them could coalesce briefly into a makeshift family, freely and knowingly laying the ugly facets of themselves bare, so they could reopen and cauterize old woulds.

The moment passed, and the poison and infection still throbbed beneath Kyle's skin, but he could localize it now, isolate it. Soon he would be able to drain the abscess, and cover the scar.

"I remember, we were so eager to get out of high school, out of South Park, have our own lives."

Wendy hummed in agreement. "And now we have our own lives, and we're just as clueless as we were then."

"And that's life." Kyle reiterated what would probably become his de facto response to all the overbearingly broad problems and questions he faced. Then he remembered little Robb O'Connor, born on July 16th, coughing in Clyde's large arms, and recalled the words of the man who'd made sure the

date would live in memory.

"When we were kids, we figured the world was full of cruel and bitter things. Now we're just being proved right."

#### 

Kyle's ending statement is a paraphrase from Oppenheimer's assertion: "My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that life is full of cruel and bitter things." I love Oppenheimer. I really do. And Los Almos. I've just never gotten much of a chance to throw the topics around in a story before.


	4. Chapter 4

Kyle sometimes noticed things he'd rather not. During his second year of medical school, he'd realized, midway through the execution of what turned out to be a lovely abdominal cavity incision, that the cadaver he was so joyfully eviscerating used to be Mr. Johansson. Kyle did what any professional in his position would have done: he set down his scalpel with the poise and delicacy of a trained surgeon, excused himself to the bathroom, and spent five minutes dry heaving into a toilet with cotton-candy-pink cleaner pooled in the bowl.

After wiping his mouth of non-existent bile and gastric fluid, he returned to the body, and proceeded to correctly ascertain the cause of death of South Park's best loved shop owner as acute Cirrhosis, likely coupled with the onset of cardiac arrest. He placed emphasis on likely, as he hadn't had an opportunity to independently examine the thoracic cavity.

Kyle's anatomy professor, while pleased with his display of clinical knowledge, pointed out that it wasn't necessary for him to identify the cause of death, but rather to simply to demonstrate his knowledge of the human body, and his ability to make a clean incision. But Kyle felt fully vindicated in making his deeper observation; he owed at least that much to a man he'd known since before he knew what a liver was, much less how to extract one and identify prolonged chemical damage.

This morning, Kyle's unwanted revelation took the form of stray, tightly coiled hairs contrasting obscenely against the dull white seat of the master bedroom toilet. He regarded the nearly iridescent wisps forlornly, as though they were the last, pathetic fallout from an explosive period of virility that he would never be able to reproduce, and the memory of which would exist only as a faded watercolor mark, far from his ability to actively recall.

"Stan?"

"Yeah?"

"How long have I been leaving my pubes all over the toilet seat?"

A pause. "I thought I'd cleaned the toilet this morning."

Kyle pressed his head against the cold tile of the wall and smiled.

"You clean the toilet every morning?"

"Yeah." Stan arrived under the door frame moments later. The soft, pale tops of his feet appeared abruptly beyond the hem of his dark blue sweatpants. Stan took obsessive care of his feet, trimming his toenails every other day, rubbing off any callous or other mold of dead skin before it could swell beyond the flush surface of his soles. Kyle had no strong predilection for feet, but he never said no to Stan when he asked, while lounging lazily across their unmade bed, if Kyle would rub moisturizing lotion into his soles. Those occasions usually ended with Kyle kneading Stan's ass with lubed up hands.

"They're just..." Kyle gestured ineffectually at the toilet seat, shaking his head. "Sorry." He spoke the word strongly and firmly; he'd learned from experience that sounding confident in his arguments was more important than actually feeling so.

Stan walked over and put his arm around Kyle's shoulder, drawing him close and placing them in essentially the same line of sight.

"For your pubes? Don't be. You should look around the side of the toilet before I clean up. Mine are all over the place. It's like a fucking carpet."

_Then your crotch must be what? A forest?_ Kyle couldn't understand any part of his thought process at this point.

"Not for the pubes, but I'm sorry for them, too. It's for not even noticing that you clean the toilet like, every day."

Stan 'hmmed,' a baritone that tickled the side of Kyle's face. He thought of Kenny, tipsy and still able to reproduce the first minute of the fourth movement of Beethoven's 9th in its original language. It was the only piece of classical choral music Kyle reconsigned, and for that, Kenny had labeled him, with grand flourish and in a faux German accent, a philistine.

"You do your work and I do mine. No big deal." And Stan kissed Kyle's temple, as he was always inclined to, his lips soft and smooth from a regular regiment of chap stick in the absence of which they fissured and bled.

"It's an unnecessary burden," Kyle muttered, trying to edge towards another topic. He might as well be poaching a lion with a slingshot.

"In what way?" Stan lowered his hand, so his fingers splayed against Kyle's stomach.

_Shame I can't just have the damn thing._

He immediately discarded the thought as repulsive, and inclined his head towards Stan's. It would have been so easy to bury his face in the slow curve of Stan's neck, lower his hands to the waist band of Stan's pants and give himself over to a lazy Saturday sex. Forget kids and confessions, and Wendy and Kenny and Clyde. What the hell did he need all that for anyway, if he and Stan were perfectly sufficient for each other?

Kyle indulged himself. He kissed the junction between Stan's neck and jaw, tangled his fingers in unwashed hair. Really he wanted nothing more than to smell and touch; Stan could keep his shirt and pants on, and Kyle would be perfectly content to rub himself off against the inside of Stan's thigh. He started the motion, pushing apart Stan's legs and maneuvering himself so he was practically straddling Stan's leg.

As though anticipating his needs, Stan placed his hands on Kyle's lower back and leaned against a wall, lowering himself into a mid squat.

"Unbutton your pants," Stan stared down and abandoned his clumsy ministrations with Kyle's jeans.

"I can get off with them on. More friction." He didn't bother to let up on Stan's jawbone.

"Kyle, come on, just-"

The doorbell rang.

Kyle stilled, his eyes narrowing in anger.

"Who the fuck is at the door on a Saturday morning?" Saturday. He remembered speaking to Wendy last Saturday; two days before he'd almost confessed after sex. The memory flowed, viscous and vicious, grime dripping into a cesspool.

"I'll get it," Stan offered, his unshaven cheeks flushed, red and white blooming just above his neck.

"No." He kissed Stan, bit his lower lip and brushed his tongue against his lower teeth. "Just let 'em leave."

The bell rang again. Stan sighed and righted himself, looking as disappointed as Kyle felt. Kyle placed a firm hand on his shoulder and shook his head.

"Dude, do you really want to show off a hickey and hard on to a stranger?"

Stan glanced at the bulge in his pants and shrugged.

"If it's a stranger, it'll make them go away faster."

Kyle couldn't find fault with that logic in his current state. He considered his own erection, regarded it for the first time as something completely separate and sentient from himself, something whose compulsion he could either give ascent to or not. The events of the last month tightened around him, absconding with what little pleasure his arousal gave.

Stan was ahead of him anyway, and Kyle could only follow and linger in the kitchen so as not to hammer the final stake into the banner head of Saturday Sexual Escapades.

"Oh Jesus, you guys."

Kyle stilled in front of the refrigerator.

"Are you two queers butt fucking in the kitchen or something?"

Even after all these years, Cartman never passed up the opportunity to mock the mechanics of gay sex.

Kyle braced himself and entered the hall, where Cartman stood in front of the now closed door. He wore a slate grey sweater and dark blue jeans; appealing, in a blunt kind of way. That described Cartman perfectly, looks and all.

Stan smiled.

"Nope. Not yet. I was just getting ready to break out big Stanny, actually."

Cartman frowned.

Kyle nodded seriously.

"That's what Stan calls his giant purple dildo. It vibrates."

Cartman closed his eyes and exhaled a long breath, as though in catharsis.

"Fuck you guys." His eyes met Kyle's, and flickered with some calculation that immediately put the other man on guard.

"Nice eye, Kyle."

Kyle bared his teeth in a violent imitation of a smile.

"Yeah. Got mugged. Hope the son of a bitch gets what's coming to him."

"We can only hope." He tapped his watch. "But you know Kyle, muggings aside, you really should have remembered our brunch."

"Brunch?" Stan voiced his confusion ahead of anyone, looking first to Kyle, then to Cartman.

Kyle gave his guest an ugly look, unraveled it in tandem with the third turn of Stan's neck.

"Uh, yeah. Sorry, but I forgot. You know. You can get distracted." He stared at Stan's crotch through the entire sentence, his arousal rising from its ebb.

"Kyle," Cartman started.

"Wait in the car. I'll get dressed and be down in ten minutes." He doesn't leave space for concessions. Cartman could die of heat exhaustion in the car as far as he cared, but Kyle's damnable curiosity goaded him with a force dual to his erection, dragging sporadic action from his normally methodical persona.

Cartman left without argument, his face mixed into disgust and resentment and something Kyle could only see as uncertainty.

"Brunch?" Stan repeated after the door closed.

Kyle showed Stan his bad eye; the other watered in the morning light from the window. Maybe the truth was scrawled in the ruptured network of ocular capillaries, painted in contrasting shades of purple and crimson, and Stan, who knew his body better than anyone, would be able to puzzle out a cipher from the wreckage.

Kyle sighed. "I wasn't expecting Cartman. I think he just wants to...talk to me." He finished the sentence as though a bad taste had filled his mouth.

Stan frowned. "Cartman. Wants to talk to you? Alone?"

Kyle nodded. "Yeah."

"What the hell for?"

Kyle spoke tiredly. "I think I have a pretty good idea."

Stan moved next to him. "You want me to come with you?"

"Nah. I'll just get it over with myself. It shouldn't take too long." He managed to suppress a cringe, but Stan wasn't focused on his face; he raked his hand through Kyle's hair, in imitation of his attentions on their first day at the adoption agency.

"You know you could still get off." Stan rested his chin on Kyle's shoulder, brought their temples to contact. His hand descended along the curve of Kyle's spine to his tailbone, then roved halfway around the circumference of his waist to finally settle above his crotch. "Keep Cartman waiting a few more minutes. Piss him off."

Kyle would have loved nothing more, sans eventually meeting with Cartman. He extracted himself as if from molasses, his limbs rapidly cooling the absence of Stan's touch.

"I just wanna get this done with." He kissed Stan once before walking down the hall to pull on his shoes.

"Should be back in under an hour. If I'm not, assume I've been arrested for homicide." The joke failed, fizzling like a wet firecracker, and Kyle was only left with mounting anxiety.

Stan smiled, small but assured. "Justifiable, by any means."

Kyle exited the house without another word, surprised to find Cartman complacent in the driver's seat; he'd really expected a sonorous display of impatience, complete with long, practiced applications of the horn.

Cartman didn't even glance at Kyle when he opened the car door. His elbow rested on the window, his face pulled into grim contemplation, and he stared straight ahead, as though expecting a third party to arrive and complete their congregation. No such person arrived, and just before awkward silence could slide into obstinate refusal to speak, Cartman started the engine and pulled out of the development, never breaking eye contact with the road.

"Wendy asked you to come." Changing scenery gave Kyle an excuse to turn towards his window and not deal with Cartman's scowls and half formed glares.

He received an unintelligible response.

"What?"

"What the fuck do you think?" They slowed for a light; the noise of the engine and the other cars was the only thing that kept the previous silence at bay; at least the mountains sprawled out in front of them, now pure, eternal and indefatigable in Kyle's mind. In relative terms, to his meager life, they were.

Cartman continued, "Yeah, Kyle. I'm gonna drive for an hour from Denver, just so I can wait for you to hop off Stan's dick so he can answer the door with a boner. Perfect Saturday for me."

Kyle rolled his eyes, but didn't reply.

"And what was I supposed to do, huh. Say, 'No, Wendy, I'm not going to, I'm not going to listen right now, because I don't want to deal with Kyle. Take over for me, Wendy, because I can't even.."

He seemed to swell with each breath, drawing raw, intangible strength from the air with each breath; his hands were bone white against the black steering wheel, his shoulders and arms struggling and quacking against the rest of his body, trying to break free of conscious control to beat, tear and mangle.

Then his eyes turned to glass, and Kyle saw him as human for the very first time.

Cartman pulled into a vacant parking spot along the street; Kyle hadn't even noticed that they'd driven downtown. The engine died and Cartman withdrew the keys.

"In, out, in out. That's all there is to it, huh? A minute, and two years of trying down the shitter and she's carrying that..." Cartman cleared his throat. "That fucking piece..." He 'hrrrmed' again. "Th..."

His voice clotted with rage.

Kyle couldn't do anything. His roles as doctor, as adviser, as level headed, objective commentator, paled into obscurity, and he was left with nothing, nothing except his place as Stan's partner, and that was dual to Stan, a parity symmetry that existed only between the two of them. He'd never thought it could between Wendy and Cartman, and if it had, and if it were now broken, then Kyle could never find a word or gesture to communicate, let alone alleviate, the agony of the violation.

Cartman regained coherence. He shook his head, trying to shake off the last vestiges of anger. He swallowed several times, leaving an opening.

Kyle said slowly, "I think-"

"I wanna kill him. That's all I've been thinking about. I dream about it. I'd get into prison, some bullshit charge. The fucker used to be a sales associate. At a store in the mall we go to. That's how he found his victims." Cartman smiled at that, and it was horrible and sad, coated with a veneer of mania. Kyle was enthralled.

"He handled her underwear. That's what she bought at that store." Now Cartman sounded detached, a lawyer reading off a profile. It was worse than the rage.

"He wouldn't be hard to goad into a fight. Oh no. He'd throw a punch, and I'd snap his arm in half. I plead self-defense, maybe get a bit of time in solitary. He goes to the medical ward. A few days later, we have another scuffle. Maybe I let him give me a black eye. I punch his teeth out. Well, that's two strikes. By now, they probably know I'm out for blood and death, so they'll set of a transfer for one of us. But I've got an ace."

Kyle's voice was dry.

"Cartman..."

Cartman spoke undaunted. "Someone with connections in the security world. Great at infiltration, even if he is a complete dick. So, night before the transfer, I get a clear path to my, uh, friend's cell, and we have a little alone time."

Cartman paused and his rage plateaued into a steady state, feeding him like fuel line; his hands were still, but his eyes were glassed over with unshed tears.

"I'd stretch him over the railing, shove a flashlight in his mouth, and dry fuck him until his guts bled."

Kyle knew what was coming, and he felt strangely detached from the statement. He assured himself that Cartman was still riding on the high that his brutal fantasy of retribution provided, that he wouldn't actually carry out the deed. But he also knew Cartman, knew first hand his violence and cruelty and capacity for harm. He played the only card he had.

"And what about Wendy?"

Cartman eyed him, expression sharp. "What about her?"

"What is she going to do when her husband is arrested once for whatever crime you have planned, and then charged again with assault and first degree murder?" His voice rose as he spoke, as he gained traction in this thoughts and the logic they were steeped in.

"This is for her, you..." Cartman groped for and couldn't find the word through his vacillating anger. "She wants to keep the damn thing. She wants to raise that sick f-" He chocked on fury again.

"And are you going to leave her for that? Are you going to throw her away now, because of what someone else did?"

"It's for her." Cartman shouted, and people on the sidewalk took notice. "We were supposed to have a child together, we were supposed to have a life, and now we have an _accident_." He said the word helplessly, bereft of any cruelty. "It's for her, it's all for her." He was nearing tears again.

"No, no it isn't. It's for you. It's to satisfy you, not to help her."

Cartman formed a fist, and Kyle continued.

"You're not the victim in this, Cartman."

The fist flew but Kyle had anticipated it the moment he started speaking. He caught Cartman's wrist and deflected the blow towards the window; it impacted with a dull thud and Cartman's swear.

"Fuck!" He cradled his throbbing hand and glared. "You fucking piece of cocksucking shit."

"Ass," Kyle said with as much vehemence.

Silence settled on them again, but Kyle shrugged it off. He didn't mind being the agent of Cartman's catharsis. Wendy deserved a stable husband, at the very least, and one not blinded by delusions, if Kyle could do anything. Cartman loved Wendy, but it always troubled Kyle whether he didn't love his ego more.

"You think you're better than me, Kyle. Always have." Cartman released his hand and rested it on the dash.

Kyle didn't say anything.

"Always playing to the high road. Always going around telling everyone else what they should and shouldn't do. Everyone. When Craig pulled a knife on that French piece of crap, best thing he ever did, by the way, you were all on about how he should have been expelled, sent to prison."

Kyle snorted. "Yeah, because assault with a knife in a school is A-OK as long as you don't like the guy on the receiving end. But whatever, that was years ago. And Craig turned out all right."

"If you wanna call shacking up with that pussy Clyde all right."

_He's not so much of a pussy in the bedroom._ But Cartman didn't need to know any of that.

"But you're not better than me, Kyle. I know you. When you get angry, when someone really crosses you, you're a violent son of a bitch, just like me."

Kyle must have paled, because Cartman smiled.

"Just think. What would you do if it were Stan? Hm? What if the guy you love, the one you share your bed and body and life with, was taken against his will? Used, tossed aside. Forget what you'd do. What would you want to do, what would you fantasize about?"

A scalpel. Kyle saw it already. Gleaming. Blade made of obsidian, dark and rippling with smokey grey bands. Obsidian could be honed down to an atomic edge, could make a cut cleaner and deeper than any steel length. He'd slice the Achilles tendons, slip down to the floor, in the dark, around a corner, behind a door. One curt motion, a horizontal slash, and he'd have a cripple at his mercy, something months and years of physical therapy would only barely remedy. He wouldn't stop there, he knew, because he'd entertained the notion before. When he'd dropped Stan off at his then job at a publisher's office, when Stan had kissed him and told him to have a good day, sweet and sincere and so loving. Kyle had only noticed the stranger staring at them because he'd leaned out to close the door after Stan, that look so full of bald anger and simmering hatred that it had ignited a kindred flame in Kyle, and he'd roared, internally, spitting and slathering that this person had No right No. Right. To ever impugn the basic reality of his and Stan's life together, and he'd grasped the eventuality of cold, calculated brutality if anyone every threatened Stan on such a level.

Kyle was amazed that he was able to maintain an illusion of calm, even under Cartman's scrutiny. He was betrayed only by his flaring nostrils and long, tremulous breaths.

"I won't even ask what you're thinking about right now." Cartman was calm, stable, understanding. Kyle's trance dissolved into tired, resigned shame.

"You're right," he said quietly. "I thought about it. It'd be no better than what you want to do."

"Not the first time you've noticed that ugly part of yourself, is it?" Cartman spoke with a quiet respect, an acknowledgment of a mutual strength to contend with and shape the most base of their impulses.

Kyle slowly turned his head and stared at Cartman. He was handsome in that same blunt, masculine way that a high school sweetheart was supposed to be. Kyle didn't think of Stan as handsome anymore. Stan was Stan, and he had no standard of comparison, in the broad scheme of things. Cartman didn't have to come to him, Kyle realized. He could have called, muttered out an insincere apology, and that would have been the end of it. Kyle wouldn't have complained; he would have been grateful for being spared his company. But he had arrived, in person, bearing no animosity and only harmless, snide remarks about Kyle's sexual preferences.

_He wanted to talk to me._

Kyle's mouth parted at the revelation. What other friends did Cartman have that he could trust with something like this? Who else besides Wendy did he ever even deign to consider an equal on any level? Maybe not an equal in his case, but at least a worthy opponent? Kyle was lost for words again, a predicament Cartman didn't seem to notice as he contemplated the apparent victory of his argument. He shaped his words not to rebuke, not to be righteous, but honest, as he did with Wendy, as he would with Kenny or Clyde.

"No. But we can't. We can't...sink to that level, because then there's nothing between us and the people we're mutilating."

"Yeah? Is that what you'd say to a guy who drugged Stan, dragged him behind a dumpster and fucked him bareback?"

Kyle banished the image before it could form. He didn't trust himself to deal with it rationally, not when Wendy's own experience was still so raw and tangible.

"No, I'd want to kill him. I'd want to do worse than kill him. But that isn't the point. My personal satisfaction can't overwhelm my restraint. If it does, I'm not the same person Stan loves. And..." Kyle swallowed, never thinking he would ever have such a conversation with Cartman. "Stan wouldn't want that. He wouldn't. Even out of revenge."

"Oh fuck it, Kyle. Saint Stan the Sanctimonious, who shits puppies and cums angels, who can't do a single wrong. Grow up. You're not in middle school. Stan would beat the living shit out of anyone who touched you, and he'd feel good while he did it."

"But not after. And that's what matters."

"And now you're speaking for him, is that it?"

Kyle sighed. "I know him. Like you know Wendy. Like she knows you, and Stan knows me. You're right. It's not middle school. We've been together with the people we love for years, and it's not about acting on impulses and getting instant gratification. It never was, and we can't let it become like that."

_I can't go on, I'll go on. Live. We have to live, really live._

He raised his hands. "There. I'm done. Take away whatever you want."

Cartman shook his head. He didn't say anything for a time, but his face relaxed, and Kyle hoped that some of his words might have hit their target.

Finally, Cartman said, "You don't understand. What this is all like." Then he looked down, up, around, anywhere but Kyle's face.

"And...I hope you never do." He barely said the last words, but they were whole and clean and steady. He never once gauged Kyle's reaction to them.

"Thank you." Kyle spoke sincerely, carefully, as the engine started. It was the closest thing to an apology Cartman would ever give him, and he refused to let it go unacknowledged.


	5. Chapter 5

Kyle decided that Kenny was the only one of them who would ever actually enjoy life.

"There is no greater luxury than being able to not give a fuck."

The sage words sounded in Kyle's mind and rose from his lips as he watched the honed spike of a pick ax rise and fall. He could hear the _thump thump_ as metal met stone and earth, even before he exited the car. The dull slam of the door wasn't enough to break Stan's attention; he didn't wipe the sweat from his forehead, only readjusted his grip and sunk the blade into the ground again. Even from a distance, Kyle saw Stan's shirt darkened with sweat along the back and front, and sodden under the arms and around the collar.

Kyle approached without preamble; he let his bag slide off his shoulder and down his arm to hit the ground. That made Stan pause, at the low point of a fresh arc. He stared, his face flushed red, wet hair splayed across his forehead as Kyle spoke.

"I think you caught most of the roots already. I could probably pull that bush up right now." He didn't even have to affect dispassion.

_Just residue from a long day's work._

Stan's shoulders fell; he was un-poised as he pulled his hand across his face, then reversed it so his palm glistened in the light.

"You knew the whole time." Stan's head moved, fluid and sure in one direction, jagged indecision in the other. His eyes remained fixed on Kyle's.

"I found out in a bad way." He wouldn't go into detail, wouldn't call attention to the fading pallet of purple and crimson that wreathed his eye, wouldn't recapitulate Wendy's expression as he congratulated her. "She told you today, then?"

"Called me up. Said she had something to tell me." Stan's words grated just as badly as metal against stone. He landed a fresh blow against the bush's base, planted his feet wide to flank the handle, then torqued it forward until the decrepit root network erupted in a cloud of dust. Fine grains of dirt filtered down like rivulets of water.

_It's all just crumbling, hm?_ Kyle's mental voice sounded on the verge of anything but.

Stan pulled at the thickets part of the root network, unearthing several inches before grunting and readjusting his grip.

"I'm not mad at you." Another grunt and he'd torn out a jumble of soil and tangled fibers.

_Heart of the plant I guess. And that'd make Stan some sort of crazed ghoul with a taste for organs._

"It's just...fuck." He tossed the clump aside without a second glance, but remained low to the ground, staring at the hole he'd made. "If I ever ran into whoever did that..."

Kyle didn't bother to listen. Cartman might be one for elaborate schemes, one to concentrate and amplify cruelty so he could revel in sadism as though it were physically manifest. Stan would strike out like an animal goaded, one blow and one goal. Kyle imagined him using a heavy sledge, aiming for the left temple, riding on enough pure adrenaline that the sight, sound and smell of pulped bone, brain matter and blood would wash off him cleanly without robbing him of strength and focus.

"Kyle? Hey." Stan was in front of him then, anger dissolving into misplaced concern that Kyle used as impetus for his next words.

"Look. Stan. Let's talk. In the house." He walked past without waiting for an affirmative response, but Stan caught up with him before he could clear the lawn.

"Is this about Cartman? He did that to your eye, didn't he. Christ, when I see him next-"

"Stan. Stop. Lay off Cartman." Before incredulity could stall him, Kyle continued. "Just think of what they're going through right now, separately and as a couple."

_And think of everything you don't know about what's happening between them._

Stan took several breaths before he nodded and followed Kyle into the house. Today should have been cleaning day, Kyle supposed. Stan usually made the full circuit before noon, and spent the rest of that day preparing something new for dinner, something involving fish or beef. Now there were no smells in the kitchen except for the earth and sweat stuck to Stan.

"I need to take a shower." Stan pushed his hair back, then wiped his hands on his shirt. He spoke as though water could purify all of them.

Kyle admired the view of Stan's pose, and started to entertain excuses, that he really wanted to tell Stan that he'd decided to try for a specialized practice, that he was ready to eschew settling for something less than his full potential. That was an even bigger lie, but at least its execution would help the both of them in the long run.

"Don't bother yet. Sit or stand." Kyle closed his eyes and rubbed them both his hand, feeding the ache in one while soothing it in the other. The idea of the conversation seemed inappropriate in light of the last few weeks.

Stan leaned against the counter, pressing the palms of his hands against the granite. Dirt from his gloves had lodged beneath his fingernails, and his fingers looked softer from the sweat.

_He does have beautiful hands._

Kyle smiled, one last foothold before he took the plunge off a cliff.

"I'm not so sure about this whole adoption."

Stan's brow crinkled slowly, comprehension contending with disbelief.

Kyle started to sweat. His heart thudded in his ears. _Thump thump._ Metal against earth.

"I don't feel..." He expelled breath. "I don't want kids. All right. I never have. Maybe I never will. And this entire process with Sheri, and the home study, and...baby proofing our bathroom." Kyle waved his hand, apparently towards the patio. "I never took it to heart."

Stan stood straight, his face blank, as though preparing to face the executioner's blade with impunity.

"All right." He nodded once. Twice. His hand swiped across his hair again, he lowered his eyes and ran his tongue across now tight lips.

Stan's silence muted Kyle; his heart and breath drowned out his other senses, and he continued to sweat. He saw wide swaths of America spread out before him, a blur of rivers and valleys and fields and mountains. His life, projected onto a metaphorical manifold of geography. Only he'd never, even in the earliest recess of his memory, pictured his life without Stan.

"I could deal with Wendy." Stan tore into the silence with the same strength and precision as he had the roots. "You know, I understand. What happened to her...of course she wouldn't come out and tell me right after it happened. I get that. She's my friend, one of my closest." Stan walked laboriously around the counter, deliberately keeping a distance between himself and Kyle.

"And she hasn't been anything more than that for years. But you and me Kyle?" Stan smiled and laughed, and his eyes shined like thin glass. "I thought..." He paused. "No, I knew. I accepted, that you and I wouldn't have any secrets. Not like this." Stan spread his hands in front of him, again like a saint turned martyr.

"And now, I, I don't know what else I can say. You didn't want kids? Okay. But why, why the hell couldn't you have told me? Anyone else, fuck them. But just..." He wiped his face. "Just you and me, all right?" Stan bowed his head; his knuckles wrapped against the counter.

Kyle tried to clear his throat, but it caught, like he'd eaten ash. He swallowed and his saliva congealed and burned.

"If I'd said no, what would have happened? Would you have just gone along with it?" Kyle was flying close to the edge now, he knew, but he couldn't play his most desperate and basic card yet.

Stan rolled his eyes. The casual gesture impacted Kyle somewhere, but he couldn't coordinate the feelings in his body quickly enough to acknowledge any pain.

"Yeah? So what? We could have worked through it, Kyle. I lost my job, I told you. You didn't get into any residency programs, you told me. Jesus." Stan smacked the side of his head, something Kyle hadn't seen him do since college, when the combined strain of his thesis, exams and his parents' finalized divorce had conspired to drive him to a psychiatrist.

"The fucking world goes on. I'm not nineteen anymore, and neither are you." Stan's hand stiffened inches from his temple. "Damn it." He turned around once and now Kyle noticed the sweat on his forehead.

"Okay, okay. And let's say that you'd gone through with this. We adopted a kid you didn't want, and we raised him or her. Great. But ten years down the road, you're getting really sick of what you think is a burden, and where does that leave us? What, would we 'stay together because of the kids?' Stan's face twisted in disgust, the accusation simple and direct.

"No." Kyle's voice sharpened. "No, that's not what would happen."

"Of course not, Kyle. You can see the future." Stan crossed the room, stared out onto the lawn, his fingers drumming against the glass of the door. The pane started to fog, and Stan wiped it away with a viscous swipe.

"Okay." He turned around. "Okay." Again, and the word was a weapon, again distinct from Cartman's, reactionary like a cornered animal's.

_A giant black wolf._ Kyle liked the image, adored it even, when Stan grimaced and exposed one of his incisors. As he moved closer, Kyle could smell him again, as though for the first time. Two feet away, and it was obvious Stan had spent two hours throwing his strength against the sun and the earth, that he was almost thirty years old, and still held the same endurance he'd trained into himself during high school and college, that his eyes were sharper and cleaner, even as the skin around them had stretched tighter.

"I'll call Sherri tomorrow. Tell her the adoption is off." Stan's lips receded towards his teeth. "And that'll be it. Right. You'll have gotten what you wanted."

Kyle's stupor shattered. "Stan, you can't say that. I..." He couldn't continue, not under Stan's steady gaze. Kyle looked away, calmed himself.

_No. I could go on. I just won't._

Stan sighed."What, Kyle? You did it for me? That's great. But saying that is just putting a band aid on a bullet wound. Save it." With that he turned away again, moved with mock purpose until the counter separated them.

"I'm sorry, then." It was like when he'd told a patient that she might have melanoma.

"Okay. I have to take a shower." Stan shut the bedroom door on his way; Kyle heard the click of metal against wood as Stan's belt hit the floor. He imagined Stan's work weary fingers unzipping his pants, then pulling off his shirt. His biceps and triceps would bulge all the more now, his back would be broader.

Kyle felt like a pervert as he sensed his growing arousal. He took a stool out from under the counter, pulled himself close, and propped his elbows up against the cool surface. Now he understood what his father had meant when he said he was tired. It wasn't the purely physical fatigue that pressed on him after a 12 hour shift, the kind he could eat and sleep his way through, just like in med school. This was the accumulated consequence of all the decisions he'd made, now laid bare in the light of unflinching retrospection, coupled with the knowledge that in years past he'd started to walk the path he'd been struggling towards for the better part of his life. He was thirty years old, and in decline from the prime of his youth, examining the figure of himself that the slow erosion of time had carved, and he felt neither an ecstasy of supreme accomplishment, nor the terror of abject failure.

"I'm just in the middle. At least if I were at the bottom I could medicate myself." Kyle couldn't amuse himself with those words. He straightened as the shower started. Maybe the warmth of the water would ease Stan's temperament. That made him smile, until his face hurt and his eyes stung. He didn't really deserve that kind of concession at this point.

The drone of the shower went on for over twenty minutes, and Kyle leaned against the wall, next to the bedroom door. He wondered what he was listening for; maybe Stan would call Kenny or even Craig, tell them he needed a place to stay for a few days, because things were intolerable back home. Kenny wouldn't mind, because Kenny was...

_Better than me, with people and empathy. He should have been the doctor._

Or maybe Stan would do like he said, and call Sherri, tell her that yes, Kyle was the product of several kinds of unfortunate circumstances and unintentionally hilarious neuroses, rendering him unable to raise or even be around kids.

Kyle heard thuds, the rustling of clothing, then the sharp whine of a zipper. Before Kyle could ruminate

on implications, the door opened, and Stan walked out brusquely, a back pack slung over one shoulder, the dog in dutiful tow.

_He's even taking the dog. It's like something out of a bad movie._

"I'm going back to South Park for a few days." Stan faced Kyle as he finished the sentence. His hair was damp, droplets of water staining his shoulders. As though sensing the unease between them, Sparky II distanced himself, sitting along a mirror line a few feet away, his ears perked.

Kyle nodded. He'd had patients who'd gone through this. Their wife or husband would say they needed a break, would go stay with friends or family. 'Just for a week or so.' Then a few days would turn into a few weeks, then a season, and soon they were either shattering drinking glasses against the floor to come out with an even number, or were otherwise working through excruciatingly awkward meetings to separate on apparently amicable terms.

"All right. So...is this over between us then, or should I still take care of the dog while you're gone?"

Stan dropped the bag and smacked an open palm against the counter.

_Good. Good. He's still...he's still feeling this. Us._

"That's your problem, Kyle. Right there. You know I thought about it, and it's not even the kid. It's you. The way you think and view the world. Your whole life. It's like you're not actually living it. It's just one long...appointment for you, that you have get through, and you know, you, you just nod your head and say 'Oh yeah sure, let's look at this in the most pedantic, structured way possible.' And then. Let me finish." Stan held up his hand as Kyle opened his mouth. "Then, sometimes, I don't know, you go on break, and you're actually the guy I started dating in high school, and we're happy and going somewhere together."

Kyle's voice was quiet.

"And how long have we been stuck in neutral?" It was wrong, all wrong, Kyle knew, but he just couldn't muster the resolve. It felt good. He finally admitted it to himself, like removing a shard of metal deeply embedded in his muscle, before the wound could rot.

Stan half turned, dragging his palm from temple to temple, gritting his teeth.

"That. Right there. Again. I don't want snide remarks right now. I kept thinking, when we first met with Sherri, and for home study, you know 'Why the fuck is Kyle acting like I'm asking him to adopt a rabid dog?' And I thought, 'Oh, well he's been like that for a while now, and he's stressed at work, and I'm unemployed, so it's OK. 'We're keeping it together.'" Stan air quoted wildly at the end, his fingers stabbing forward. He took a deep breath, retrieved his bag, and snapped his fingers to bring the dog to his side.

"South Park. I'll be back in a week." He walked down the hall, towards the garage, and Kyle pushed himself off the wall only when he heard the bolt slide out. Stan opened the door, paused, his shoulders tensed and his trembling hands curled into fists.

"I'll call you." He moved down the steps without closing the door, and Kyle thought, absurdly, as he watched Stan get into the car and open the garage door, that the situation wasn't as tightly dramatic as he'd first thought. The car withdrew without incident, and there was no pained, lingering look from its driver. After the motor stopped, Kyle was left framed in the doorway, one hand resting on the side molding, and he knew, even before the light shut off, that he was stumbling in the dark without a light, and for the first time, he had only himself to rely on.

### 

The following few days saw the continuation of Kyle's routine with virtually no deviations. He woke at 7 AM, showered, ate cereal for breakfast, and left the house in less than half an hour. Perpetually sunny days grated on him as they hadn't before. Somehow, while crossing over the line that separated his comfortable domesticity from his apparent, impromptu bachelorhood, he'd lost the sunglasses he usually kept in the container on the dash. The first day of driving with the full force of the sun glaring through the windshield, he'd ran a red light, and had the wonderful fortune to be pulled over by a cop who thought it his personal mission to give lengthy lectures to perpetrators about the privilege of having a license. Kyle nodded along, then smiled and ended their exchange with the off-handed remark of 'Well, that's great. And I hope to see you someday again. In my operating room.'

He strongly suspected he'd be receiving the maximum fine possible for a traffic violation, and probably a point on his license. On the way home, he'd resorted to digging Stan's ridiculously large, silvered aviators out of the glove compartment.

"Fucking Tucker," Kyle muttered after examining himself in the mirror. Craig had worn glasses almost exactly like these in high school, always in a half-assed effort to hide the fact that he smoked pot at lunch on Fridays.

"Looking good, Dr. Brof." The receptionist for the day complemented his new look, seemingly without irony. After that, Kyle took to keeping the aviators in his shirt pocket, and pulled them on as he left the office for the day, as though he were about to step into a Porsche or Aston Martin and drive off to a mountain resort.

_Maybe I'll have an affair. To seal the deal._

A quiver hummed through him at the thought, like he'd been brushed by something soft and foreign and unknown. His stomach and limbs felt light,as tendrils of apprehension knotted themselves throughout his body.

Kenny came out at the top of the list, as he often did. Kyle thought of knocking on his door and asking if he could make up a foursome. He wasn't even sure how the mechanics of that number would work, with only one woman. On further thought, he supposed it would all be linear; they'd just line up and oscillate like one long fuck chain, and hopefully manage to achieve some kind of resonance. Kye supposed he'd be in the middle, between Kenny and Christophe. If Christophe even liked dick. Or Kenny. Now he wondered if being with Kenny would even count as cheating. He was...Kenny. Considering the circumstances, Kyle doubted he'd even say yes to the proposal. And then there was Bebe, and Christophe.

"I've never seen a woman naked in person." He stared at the rear-view mirror as he spoke. The aviators deflected most of the blow, but the fact still sounded odd, like he was saying 'I've never jacked off, or looked at porn.' But what did it matter? He hadn't managed a boner for anyone but Stan for over a decade, and that...that still seemed perfectly natural.

Kyle started the car before he had time to lose himself in more thought. He was being stupid and desperate, if he was thinking this hard about sex with Kenny, however much he'd fantasized about it in high school. As he arrived home, Kyle acknowledged to his reflection that Stan was the only person he'd ever seen naked in person.

One part of his life which had deteriorated was the quality of meals. Kyle had neither the motivation, nor the knowledge, to prepare much beyond salad and something off the grill. He stood and stared at the piece of meat as it sizzled above the coals, even though he knew enough to close the lid; whether or not he did had little impact on the readiness of his food, so he shrugged and kept looking and poking, as though at an experiment.

The rest of the evening passed either in front of the TV, or his laptop. With the former, he watched international news with benign scowl on his face, waiting for the loud, uncensored proclamation by the commentator that the world was in the shitter, and that Kyle and everyone else could just stop watching and go back to gnawing on over cooked pork chops.

At the end of the third day, while still eagerly awaiting the announcement of the apocalypse, Kyle felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

"Yeah?" He answered without looking at the number.

"Kyle, I just got off the phone with Stan's mother, and-"

"Fuck." Kyle lowered the phone and didn't put it back to his ear until his mother paused in her string of questioning. Of course, South Park meant 'home, home', back to his mother, and not a rundown motel.

"Kyle? Kyle? Are you there?"

"Yeah, I'm here."

_Unfortunately._

"Well?"

"Well what?"

"Kyle, if you're going to play this game..."

"It's not a game, mom. It's just a personal thing. Every couple goes through it." He was talking out of his ass, but then that's what he figured most marriage councilors did anyway, if his experience with potential candidates in med school was any indication.

"Kyle, your father and I had our ups and downs, but we never decided to spend a week apart like this instead of working things out for ourselves."

"Well, great for you and dad. This is Stan and I. He decided he needed some time to do...whatever, with his mom, and I couldn't tell him no. He's an adult." _And so am I, supposedly. I was only just fantasizing about my best friend's cock up my ass._

His mother sighed, one of those patronizing sounds that he'd heard since he was old enough to contradict what his parents said.

"What are you two planning to do after this week apart? What if Stan doesn't want to come back?"

"Then I'll turn into an even sadder, lonelier, and more boring version of myself, and I'll probably die spouse-less, child-less, and before that end up having casual sex with my friend Kenny." Kyle had trouble keeping a straight face at the last statement, but the mirth stuck in his lungs and throat.

"Kyle, you're not even taking any of this seriously. This is your life!" His mother's crescendo was garbled by the beep beep beep of call waiting, which Kyle ignored in favor of the TV. "This is exactly like in medical school, when you just stopped focusing, and didn't get into a residency program. You could have been a surgeon by now."

Kyle snapped to attention, his voice rising for the first time since the conversation.

"Stop lecturing me. Stan gave me the same spiel before he left, and I don't need it from you too. Med school is done. It's been done for five years, so let's just drop it. And before you start on me about the adoption thing, that's between me and Stan, and we'll work it out."

"Well Kyle if Stanley thinks the same way then-"

"What? What do you want from me? Want me to build a time machine, go back five years and smack myself upside the head and say 'hey, dumbass, focus?'" Kyle had stood and was shouting by now, the second set of call waiting beeps almost goading him into tossing the phone. "Stan will come back. We'll sort this out. That's that."

"Kyle, you can't know that. Will you listen to yourself? You're not thinking clearly."

"I am, actually. I'm thinking very clearly. And I know Stan." Know him so well that I knew he'd react like this, and I still didn't do shit to stop it. "Thanks for the concern, but I don't need it. I'll talk to you later. Goodnight."

"Kyle-"

He cut the connection and sat back down. The TV featured a panoramic of a desert, accompanied by a dry, detached commentary that Kyle tuned out.

It was true, everything he said, even if that truth wasn't obvious to an outside observer. Just like he didn't fully understand Kenny or Craig's relationships, or even his parents'. Slowly his attention wandered to Wendy. Before meeting with Cartman, he'd pegged the marriage as over, lost to Cartman's pride and anger.

I wouldn't wish it on you.

And with those words Cartman as he knew him had spiraled completely out of his reach, and his appraisal had failed him yet again.

Maybe-

His phone vibrated in his hand.

"What is it now?" He'd be hearing about this for weeks, but he didn't care.

"Hello, Kyle? Is this a bad time?"

"Oh. Hi Sherri." Kyle's anger dissolved, and he sat back, wondering why Stan hadn't broken the news yet.

"How have you been, since we last spoke?"

'Fine', he almost said. But what was the point of lying?

"There's not much to say. Stan and I won't be going forward with the adoption."

Sherri paused. Kyle wondered if anyone had ever beat her to the punch, taken control of the process from her hands.

"I'm sorry to hear that. I-"

"I don't think you are. At least not on my account."

"Kyle I don't know how you came away with the impression that I don't like you, but it's unfounded. It was only ever my job to evaluate your potential aptitude as a parent."

The sound and sight of Stuart McCormick's beer bottle shattering inches from his son's head flared in Kyle's mind and subsisted, slowly burning like a brand.

"And what was your conclusion?"

"You're unfit by default. You don't want this, Kyle. I could see that from day one. I thought it might have been initial uncertainty on your part, but after a few more meeting, and the home visit, I knew there was no way you were committed."

_And Stan didn't see that. He just...I said 'yes' and he..._

"All right. Then why did you let this go on for so long?"

"We were barely a month and half into the process." Another pause. "To be perfectly honest, I wanted to make an appointment so you and Stan could come in and I could break the news to you in person."

Kyle didn't bother to ask what news she'd have for them. In a way, he preferred that they didn't have to sit through a formal appointment. It was just him and Stan.

"So I see. Well, I guess you've been saved some trouble. I appreciate the call, though. And...so does Stan."

As before, Kyle cut the connection before he could hear a response. He didn't know if his behavior would be recorded in some kind of psychological profile, to be distributed to every other agency in the state, forever branding him 'disinterested' and dashing any future attempts at adoption.

_And maybe that was the plan all along._ If the hopeful psychiatrists he knew in med school were any indication, he'd probably landed right on the professional consensus. He'd damned himself, and still wanted to do the same to Stan, first by deceiving him, then by speaking for him.

So does Stan.

Kyle flicked his wrist and sent his phone flying to the table; it stopped on impact, consequence of the rubber carrying case he'd bought with his contract. His mother still hadn't tried to call him back. Maybe she'd given up, tired of her stubborn son's insistence that he knew best.

_I know well enough for myself and Stan, so why fuck don't I just blow everyone else off too?_

Rather than watch a review of Japan's plan for economic revival, Kyle shut the TV off, cleaned his dish and almost went to bed before realizing it was only 6:45.

"Bring on the 12 hour shifts." He let the dish fall from too high, and ending up chipping its rim.

"Shit." For the next few minutes he scoured the kitchen floor on hands and knees until he found the ceramic chip, almost lost under the refrigerator.

Feeling strangely triumphant, Kyle placed chip onto plate and realized it was from an entirely different piece of china.

With disgust, Kyle realized he'd actually been smiling.

"Fuck this." He dropped the plate into the sink without a care, and decided turning in at 7 PM might not be a bad idea.

Kyle stripped down to his boxers and pulled off the dark blue comforter, then assumed his usual spread eagle position, face down. He could only smell himself in the sheets, his scent apparent to him only in the absence of Stan's, ambient and static to his senses.

_Now I want Stan's smell in the sheets._ Kyle had gone to medical school, but he didn't want it, didn't want to be a surgeon in the end, and now he was a run of the mill doctor, and that was fine, even if his mother didn't think so. He didn't want children. Sherri had seen that. And he didn't want to be alone. Stan.

Kyle smiled. That was it. That was all.

Kyle woke before his alarm went off. He took a long shower, and stood beneath the hot stream long enough for his muscles to slacken and his fingertips to wrinkle. Instead of shaving, Kyle decided to leave his rust colored stubble as it was. He'd often pictured Stan with a short beard, or at least a goatee, and this might give impetus.

"Right, Kyle. Focus on trivialities first, and everything else will come together."

Kyle dressed quickly, a sweater and jeans, and packed only an overnight bag and water. He was glad that Stan had taken Sparky II; the prospect of a two hour drive with a yapping, happy dog in the backseat made children seem tempting.

_Stan didn't call._

He stared at his phone as the garage door rumbled open. It was only the fourth day, and as though trapped in a biblical parable, Kyle had indulged the notion of a rigid time table of penance before absolution.

He thought of roses before turning onto the highway; would a token gift accelerate the process of forgiveness? Stan had never expressed interest in store bought flowers, but then neither had his mother, until she received them and showed her husband unreserved appreciation.

_If it were Clyde, I'd buy him tulips._

Kyle decided against gifts, and soon images of petals and stems wrapped in wax paper gave way to the unspoiled expanse of a cloudless sky careening over vast planes and snow-capped mountains. He'd driven east only once before, when interviewing for med school in Michigan, and that had instilled in him an undying appreciation for Colorado's landscape. This was America, he'd decided, with unbridled gusto and almost painfully fettering nostalgia. Stan hadn't come with him on that trip, on Kyle's insistence that it wasn't worth interrupting both their schedules. On his return, Kyle had surprised Stan by arranging a camping trip in the most remote area he could still deem safe, and he fulfilled his wish of having Stan slowly beneath sweet scented conifers and the gaze of frigid mountain peeks.

Kyle squinted against the rising sun, depressing the gas pedal even as his vision blurred. He blinked in rapid succession; it was almost impossible to crash on this highway, as evidenced by Kenny, who regularly took it at ninety miles an hour without sleep.

An hour later, Kyle remembered that Stan had taken the car that could actually handle eight percent grades without its brakes wearing out.

"Well, that's fucking fantastic." So he went at ten miles below the already reduced limit, and by the time he'd started the ascent, semis were blaring their horns at him

The landscape finally leveled out at 3200 meters, and the instant he hit flat road, Kyle's foot inclined and maintained a flat eighty right until the frost encrusted 'Welcome to South Park' sign greeted him like a drug addled ex. He hit the brake and halved his speed so quickly he was nearly rear ended; the horn and middle finger he received went ignored as he drove down Main Street. Two years ago, he'd made a half-assed remark that he wouldn't return unless it was for a funeral. That had almost gotten him thrown out of the house by a torrent of hysterical screams.

After passing Tom's Rhinoplasty, Kyle's hands started to sweat. Or maybe he'd simply become aware of the sweat. It didn't matter. He wiped his hands on his jeans and drove on, the buildings thinning out and giving way to squat, black roofed houses and snow choked lawns.

Minutes later he pulled into Stan's driveway, next to Stan's car.

_Our other car,_ Kyle amended, making his way up the path.

Stan's mother answered the door after one knock, as though she'd been expecting him.

"Kyle." She said his name and then stared, wide eyed.

_And there goes that theory._

"Hi. Mrs. Marsh." Kyle resorted to an outdated and awkward address.

She didn't notice, and nodded slowly before opening the door wider.

"Come in."

The door closed, and only then did Kyle think to ask, "Is Stan here?"

Sharon paused. Kyle had no idea which details Stan had included or omitted, whether he'd even told her that she'd probably never be a grandmother. He couldn't bring himself to care about that now.

"Yes. He's...well he was in the backyard. I think he's in his room now." She looked at him calmly, without accusation, but of course, she knew about the deceptive delicacy of a years long relationship first hand."

"Is he..taking visitors?" Kyle cringed as he spoke, but she at least didn't begrudge him his discomfort.

"You don't need an appointment, Kyle. You never have."

"Right. Of course." He toed off his shoes and ascended the stairs quietly, two at a time, like he'd done since his legs were long enough to accomplish the feat.

Stan's door was closed; a South Park Cow stared at him with vacant paper eyes, tongue protruding comically. Kyle smiled and touched the cut out. He could picture Stan with scissors, cutting along the edges with accuracy Kyle had yet to achieve.

_Oh God._

Kyle's eyes watered. Of all the things to make him start blubbering. He cleared his throat and wiped his eyes as the door opened.

_He looks just like when when he left. But what the hell did I expect?_

Kyle raised his hand reflexively to touch Stan's cheek, but his arm went rigid in midair; Stan wasn't smiling, he wasn't shocked. He stood aside just like his mother, and Kyle had no choice but to enter.

"I heard you downstairs." Stan waited until he was sitting on his bed to speak. Kyle took the desk chair, turning it so they were facing each other.

Kyle nodded. Always nodding, just to get through it all. Neither spoke after that, while Kyle looked around. He felt a familiar warmth. The bed was where they'd first kissed; the chair where Stan had gone down on him the second week of Christmas break of junior year. And they'd slept together, with perfect innocence, on that same bed, occupying time and memory, transforming them into a smooth flow, water from an overflowing basin.

"I called the adoption off. Sherri called, I mean." Kyle 'hrmmed'. "And I told her that we weren't moving forward."

Stan shrugged. "She called me too. I don't know. I guess she didn't think we were on the same page. But, I guess she didn't know. So. I told her the same thing you told her."

_Only less like an asshole, I imagine._

"Stan I'm sorry."

"I know." He made no move; no quiver of his face or eyebrows gave his thoughts away.

Kyle gnawed his lip. The flood of emotion from the paper cow had receded, and Kyle was as stunted as ever.

"I should have come sooner." He hoped he could at least convey regret.

"No." Stan sat straighter, his shoulders and back popping. "That wouldn't have been a good idea."

"Oh." Kyle sits back, hands empty of options. He's starting to sweat. Then he frowns. "Stan. I don't regret coming here. And I wouldn't...I should have come sooner." He trailed off, staring at Stan's face for an expression that still didn't rise.

_God, enough of this._ Kyle left the chair and took the space on Stan's right. He didn't touch him, not yet, only leaned in to him, and felt relief simply because Stan didn't move away.

"Are you going to want to come home with me?"

Stan turned his head, considering an errant question that happened to grab his attention.

"What is this, then?"

"South Park isn't our home anymore." He spoke quietly, as though afraid Stan's mother might hear.

Stan pulled away and turned his body sharply.

"Kyle we lived here for almost twenty years. You can't kick it under the rug."

"I'm not. I'm... Are you telling me you're going to move back here?"

"No. Christ. Why are we even arguing about this?"

"Because I'd like to think that the last five years. No. The fifteen years we've had together, mean something too."

Stan moved back, offended. "Of course they do. But this is part of us too. South Park. You said so yourself, when you got back from Michigan."

_The smell of pine and dew and rain and leaves and_ Stan. _And knowing that we were finally together for the long run, that we'd found our home. God that might have been the best day of my life._

"I remember." Then he lowered his eyes.

Stan shifted awkwardly. They were back in high school, coming to terms with each other.

_Maybe soon I'll forget what Stan's dick looks like._

Kyle stopped short on tail of that thought. Even this, even now he couldn't stop himself from mocking the situation. He stood.

"Stan, you were right, about how I look at life. I was always like that. Med school just trained me better, brought that side of me to the surface. I didn't really want to be a surgeon, or be famous, or cure cancer or any of that shit."

Stan's face relaxed, no anger or frustration marring his features this time. He was hearing Kyle out, and the opportunity was golden.

"You want kids. I get that. You want...a family. I get that. But I don't think I can give that to you. I'm sorry, I really am. And you were right, again. It was so shitty of me to pretend otherwise. If we'd tried to raise a kid like that, we would have ruined him and us. But." And now his voice thickened, his throat burned. "Please. Just...come back with me, at least for a few days. If we're going to end...us. I want to be able to look you in the face when it happens." He looked away, towards the window, at the grey sky.

Stan cleared his throat. Kyle looked back and was motioned to sit again. He sat so his and Stan's thighs touched, their hands in their laps.

"I called my dad. You know he's actually good to talk to, when you ask him the right thing at the right time. And he told me, exact words, 'Stan, if you're going to stay with someone, make sure you're not just in it for the fucking and the kids.'"

Kyle muttered, "Well, yeah. He does have his moments. I guess."

"But he's right."

"OK." Kyle stared at his hands. "So then what's your answer?"

Stan expelled a loud breath. "I want kids." He held Kyle's gaze, his own earnest and calm and sure, just as Kyle has always seen him.

"And I want you." He takes Kyle's hand. Their palms touch lightly. Rough and soft.

Kyle smiled. It's all he can do.

Stan continued. "I know what having you is like. I know what we're like. And I'm not ending that, not now. All we can do is try. Like everyone else."

Stan brought them together, his arms circling Kyle around his back and waist. Kyle pressed his head against Stan's shoulder, and he knew then that he could only do this, endure, live. He squeezed Stan's hand.

_I'll go on._


End file.
